Tech writer and developer, Ben Stringer from Builder AU reviews the move from a Linux development environment for Java to one with an Apple PowerMac G5.
Java Development from Linux to Mac
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
what about J2EE ?
what about Java 5 (Tiger, the Artist formerly known as 1.5) ?
what about commercial things like WebSphere (the appserver), Bea Weblogic ?
I can believe, that J2SE runs well on a Mac, but J2EE ?
Shure, you can use JBoss, you can use iBus or OpenJMS a.s.o.
What about the Sun AppServer ?
Shame he didn’t spend more time on the Mac or browsing Apple’s developer website. If he did, he would have realized that you could download XCode for free and I don’t know where he got the idea from that you need to pay for the CD. One of the biggest selling points of OS X (for developers) is the fact that all the development tools are readily available.
Weblogic isn’t officially supported by BEA. If you really want it, guess you have to make it known to them that you want support fo the Macs. There should be no reason it won’t run, and there are some employees at BEA who are supporting Weblogic on their own. Check out [url]http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/4091%5B/url]
He works on a laptop and now is trying to compare it to PowerMac G5 with 2 CPU ?! How much did they pay for it?
Java has lost its place as being the most cross-platform runtime when the OSX developer is left wondering. Wanna know what is TRULY cross-platform now? .NET! I can develop with Mono or PNET on my OSX, Linux, and Windows box. Java screwed this one up royally….
What are you talking about? What”s the OS X developer left wondering?
.NET just isn’t an option on the Mac at the moment. One of the complains I have against Java on the Mac is that it’s slow. Apple hasn’t implemented the Server VM at all and as such we’re still stuck with the client VM. Granted, this isn’t a problem for a lot of apps, but for the apps that need the absolute amount of speed, this is a real shame.
Mono on the other hand, runs is about 40% slower than Java on OS X, even though Java on OS X is crippled by the lack of a server VM. Mono on Linux is no where near the speed of Sun or IBM’s JVM.
Who is paying for this ‘opportunity’ to play with an expensive Mac ??
Sun’s Java Studio Creator is available for OS X:
http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/javatools/jscreator/downloads/
XCode may have been loaded into a folder on the harddrive,
along with a trial version of the Mac database product.
Java works just perfectly on OSX and Apple’s implementation adds nicely to the cross platform benefits of writing Java apps. Apple’s implementation of Swing is really done well and apps feel remarkably native. A couple improvements are still on the wishing chair, such as a server vm and better Swing startup time. But, perhaps these will come with time.
For now, it’s another great platform for java development and targeting.
Was not asking any questions or reading any documentation also part of the test?
– XCode comes on all G5 hard disks – it’s just not installed by default. He didn’t even need the (free) download.
– It’s annoying but necessary to buy a real mouse to use a Mac. It’s hard to believe this guy didn’t have a 3 button USB mouse lying around somewhere (Does he use the trackpad on his Centrino? A one button Apple mouse is better than that.) Of course then we’d get a gripe about middle button paste not working.
This looked like one of those reviews that mostly evaluates how well a completely different product behaves exactly like what the reviewer is used to. I have to give him points for liking the cool hardware design, though.
He has like a whole bunch of comments under his article saying he doesn’t have to buy xcode, but that it is included, or can be downloaded. Yet, still no update on the article.. What is it with reviewers and not wanting to admit they made a mistake? (this is not the only case of factual errors in a review, without a correction)
This is one of the dumbest articles I’ve seen.
First comparing a linux laptop to a dual G5… hmmm, I wonder which one would be faster. Why doesn’t he try to at least compare it to one of the fastest Intel or AMD based laptops and see how the speed compares. Better yet, compare it to a dual opteron.
Second he’s using FC1, Eclipse 2, Ant 1.6.1, and J2SE 1.4.2_03 … when FC2, Eclipse 3, Ant 1.6.2, and J2SE1.4.2_05 and 1.5.0 have all been out for awhile (1.5.0 just came out but at least it’s a FREE choice for windows, linux, and solaris).
Third he talks about running open source software under linux and then under OSX. Well, eclipse, ant, and java pretty much run the same way no matter which platform you are on.
My opinion: To use OSX as a development tool has everything to do with wanting OSX for other things than anything else. XCode may be free but it’s a waste of time compared with the other IDE’s available for java development and it’s certainly not a selling point for the majority of java developers. Apple lags in java support (unless you buy into the developer program) which makes it impossible for me to use as a development platform no matter how much eye candy the OS may offer. And where is their notebook with ‘normal’ keyboard and two button touchpad? I considered the 17″ powerbook but ruled it out based on the keyboard and lack of a second button… no, I don’t want to carry an external mouse.
Don’t misunderstand me. OSX is very nice. Apple’s sense of design is great. But when it comes to java development, 3 things matter:
1. how free it is
2. how up to date it is
3. how much development hardware is available by default (full keyboard and multiple button mouse).
Other than that, environments are fairly transparent.
suns studio one / NetBeans is not neccessalary the same as the avaibility of the Sun Appserver.
You can have it too, but not for OSX.
the ibm java implementation für the ppc/power on linux is faster then the impl. of apple in license form sun on osx.
the next point is : the add-ons from apple on java related to their own technology are nice, but not relevant. who cares about it in a world of serveral operating systems which can host java ?
Its like the same as the pollution of Java from MS was, years ago.
Sorry, again, I guess OSX is very good for J2SE, but its far away from good for J2EE.
its nice for school and students, possibly for consultants.
Why, it seems it’s trendy right now to tell the world tales of such heroism ! I’ve tried a Mac recently ! Whoo !
Tell you what : I’m trying a new shampoo brand tomorrow ! I really should tell the world so that people can choose more wisely to follow or not to follow my example !
…
This kind of article is uninteresting, uninformative and has been done ad nauseam. If it’s not PC vs. Mac, it’s Windows vs. Linux, Linux vs. the world, FOSS vs. proprietary software, etc. Barely worth putting on a blog.
suns studio one / NetBeans is not neccessalary the same as the avaibility of the Sun Appserver.
You can have it too, but not for OSX.
the ibm java implementation für the ppc/power on linux is faster then the impl. of apple in license form sun on osx.
the next point is : the add-ons from apple on java related to their own technology are nice, but not relevant. who cares about it in a world of serveral operating systems which can host java ?
Its like the same as the pollution of Java from MS was, years ago.
Sorry, again, I guess OSX is very good for J2SE, but its far away from good for J2EE.
its nice for school and students, possibly for consultants.
Why not write to the providers of those implementations of app servers to release products for Macs? The same thing goes for PPC Linux. Sure, there is the IBM JDK, but from my (limited)experience with it, it isn’t particularly stable. How many app servers are there that support PPC Linux? I don’t care how fast it runs, just so long as it runs. With the IBM JDK, it’s pretty much hit and miss.
Apples implementation of J2SE is fantastic, like you’ve said. But there is still a lot of work that needs to be done. A faster VM IMO is high on the list.
First off, he’s comparingthe software performance eventually so it is reasonable to compare same software on different hardware, it’s like game review, you test on different system and says this game is optimized for whatever processors. However, this article is pretty amature, he is using percentage to show the differences between the performance improvement; shouldn’t he use real number instead? A game that runs 1 second faster on A machine than B machine doesn’t mean anything sometimes, if this game runs 3FPS on A machine and 4FPS on B machine, to the real world, there is no difference at all but the percentage is 1/4 = 25%, sounds like big improvement but so what? you can’t see the difference on screen. Anyway, you get my point.
I just have to say the same about the quirky Swing implementation of Java on OSX, its, as seen from my little experience on it, its not so good as expected.
IBMs Java Implementation runs stable and fast, on AIX and on Linux, as Linux on x86 and PPC/PPC64.
“I don’t care how fast it runs, just so long as it runs.”
Well, in a real world your users like to have response-times, not delivery-times.
Youre right, it is limited fantastic for J2SE, so for Students, who can wait. 😉
“Sorry, again, I guess OSX is very good for J2SE, but its far away from good for J2EE.
its nice for school and students, possibly for consultants. ”
…and James Gosling.
Jules.
People are telling MacOsX is good for J2SE but not for J2EE, this is simply not true. J2EE is simply some enterprise libraires on top of J2SE. You dont need a different JVM or such. Yes, maybe expensive IBM app servers may not be available for macosX but you can easily run several app servers or servlet containers without a problem in OsX. For enterprise grade server side applications You can use Spring, Hibernate, tons of MVC and J2EE libraries without any problem. And IDE’s like IDEA, Eclipse or NetBeans are already available for MacOSX. Truth is a lot of J2EE developer i know from web already uses MacOSX for their development environment.
addition to my previous comment,
For J2EE development in MacOSX, check atlassian, they have probably the best enterprise grade issue tracking and professional wiki software awailable (not to mention products are complete OS – DB and Browser independant).. and guess what, they use Macs.. Beat that..
http://www.atlassian.com/apple/