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Java Businesses Programming Apple

Java 1.3.1 Available for Mac OS X 38

Posted by pudge from the java-for-smart-people dept.
moofman and TheAJofOZ write in that Java 1.3.1 Update 1 is available for Mac OS X. The new release offers text, mouse, and printing improvements, as well as better overall stability and compatibility. Mac OS X 10.1.3 is a prerequisite. Get it via Software Update, or download it from Apple. For more information, check out the developer release notes.
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Java 1.3.1 Available for Mac OS X More

Java 1.3.1 Available for Mac OS X

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  • mozilla .9.8 seems to actually work finally under OS X...does this mean we'll see java working properly now? or will this further break mozilla's java support? (i've heard you can ue java under OS X before, but no one has written anything comprehensive suggesting it's anything simpler than brain surgury to get it to work.)
  • ...limewire started running well. Everytime i used it on a peecee it ran significantly smoother and it irked me. peecee better than my G, ha, not any more!

  • Correct pathname for graphics accel config (Score:4, Informative)

    by melquiades ( 314628 ) on Tuesday February 26, 2002 @12:19PM (#3070708) Homepage
    This update apparently improves graphics hardware acceleration for Java (haven't tested it yet). It's still somewhat experimental, so you have to turn it on manually. With the new update, you specify the video cards for which you want it enabled. The release notes [apple.com] explain how to do this, but give the wrong path for the config file that has the names of the video cards your machine might support. The correct path seems to be:

    /Library/Java/Home/lib/glconfigurationlist.propert ies

    Curious to see if there's an improvement. Though the low-level stuff is blazingly fast on OS X, the high-level, especially Swing, has been pretty sluggish.
    • I tried following the directions to enable the hardware acceleration on my iBook. I have a program that I wrote that has a table of JTextAreas that I would love to have accelerated.

      It didn't seem to work. I'm not sure if the iBook video card is supported. It is not listed in the release notes, but it is listed in the glconfigurationlist.properties file.

      If anybody gets it to work, please reply and let everyone know.

  • Yup, no more dummies - for now ;-)

  • Impressive (Score:4, Interesting)

    by D_Fresh ( 90926 ) <slashdot AT dougalexander DOT com> on Tuesday February 26, 2002 @01:15PM (#3071055) Journal
    Not because of the Java content, but because Apple has indicated that they are really dedicated to updating OS X as soon as they can, in as many areas as they can. Contrast this to the monolithic, occasionally dangerous [nwfusion.com] service packs released by MS.

    Apple did have that little iTunes installer script fiasco [macworld.com], but even that was corrected later the same day. I'd just like to give the OS X team at Apple kudos for releasing updates on a regular basis, and showing themselves to be committed to improving OS X. If nothing else, it's fun to be the hamster pressing on the Software Update button and getting rewarded with food pellets every so often.

    • Ever run Windows Update...there's always some little items listed under the "Critical Fix" section. I much as I dislike Windows, they did start the process of releasing often with a few big releases along the way at Windows 98.
      • Ever run Windows Update...there's always some little items listed under the "Critical Fix" section.

        That's true - I'd forgotten about Windows Update. Still, I prefer Apple's method for updating - whether they're fixing bugs or not, the spin is always on the added functionality. Critical Updates makes it sound like "If you don't download this patch, you're fscked", whereas grabbing 10.1.3 is more like "Here, take this little point release, we hope it makes your life better." The biggest difference perhaps is that Apple doesn't have that many critical fixes for security, in part because it's BSD now, but also probably due to the fact that no one is banging as hard on OS X as they are on XP. (No one gets famous finding OS X security holes, but you'll get 15 minutes and more if you find a hole in XP. :)

    • Frequent updates are nice and not neccesarily limited to MacOS X -- I found this to be true also as far back as MacOS 8.

      However, with MacOS X the installer scripts continue to be intolerant of moving applications from their default directory (typically "/Applications"). For example, I moved the "/Applications/Mail" app to "/Applications/Internet/Mail" and MacOS X 10.1.3 failed to update it properly. This has been mentioned on MacFixit as well.

      • Obviously the Software Update version finder engine depends upon strict directory structures to compile a database of current applications. I don't know much about OS X's file system, but do they have anything similar to the Windows Registry, which provides a centralized database of installed apps? Does OS X have a desktop file for this?

        I wonder if breaking the dependence on specific directories for system apps would be an easy thing for them to fix or not - if they couldn't look for the app where it "should' be installed, would they just have to do a search to find it? Would that be a performance hit? Definitely a weakness of the update feature, though.

      • Re:Impressive (Score:2, Informative)

        by DavidRavenMoon ( 515513 )
        However, with MacOS X the installer scripts continue to be intolerant of moving applications from their default directory (typically "/Applications"). For example, I moved the "/Applications/Mail" app to "/Applications/Internet/Mail" and MacOS X 10.1.3 failed to update it properly. This has been mentioned on MacFixit as well.

        This was posted on MacIntouch the other day:

        In the System 6-9 days, Apple used an installer that used a quasi-proprietary file format known as "tomes." The tome-based installers supported HFS file descriptors, so it could write over a file no matter where it was located in the hierarchy of the disk. It also treated aliases with respect.

        Starting with Mac OS X, Apple moved to a package-based installer that uses Pax as its archival format. Pax was not created by Apple; see its man page (type "man pax" in the terminal for more information). The Pax-based installation system has two big drawbacks:

        1. Pax installs files based on its path; Pax does not support the file descriptors used in HFS/HFS+. (The other Mac OS X disk format, UFS, doesn't support file descriptors.) This basically means Pax won't look to see if the item to be installed is already on the disk but in a different location.

        2. If the path specified in a Pax archive actually exists physically on the disk, then Pax will correctly follow the path and overwrite the correct files. But if that path uses any type of link (hard link, symbolic link, or System 7-style alias), then Pax will blow away the link and create a physical directory structure as specified in the archive. In other words, it will not only ignore links, but it will overwrite them.

        #1 may just be a sign of the times, since the Unix world doesn't have any real concept of file descriptors; they've been sort of a Mac-only thing. #2 is a flaw in Pax's design.

        As a consequence of both, though, until Apple comes up with a better package system, it's a bad idea to move anything that Mac OS X installs from its default place. That includes moving stuff around and making aliases; it's broken right now.

  • nice but how about 1.4.0 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jilles ( 20976 ) on Tuesday February 26, 2002 @01:34PM (#3071216) Homepage
    Last year when mac os X was released there was a lot of discussion on the Javalobby about whether or not mac os X was suitable for Java development. One of the concerns raised by among others me was that Apple had been rather slow in updating their JVM in the past. Having java 1.3.1 on Mac OS X is certainly useful but considering it has been out for months on Solaris, Windows and linux it's a bit late. In addition, jdk 1.4.0 was recently released for those platforms as well so when is it going to be available on the mac? This year? Next year?

    Apple and Sun (I believe they are cooperating)need to speed up the development if they want to lure Java developers to their OS. It's a fine OS no doubt, but being able to run an up to date JVM is pretty essential if you are developing Java. Basically anything you start developing today will most likely be deployed on a jdk 1.4.x environment.
    • AFAIK, this is still the situation: Sun develops the Windows and Linux JVM's entirely in-house, while Apple has to develop the Mac JVM by itself with some "cooperation" from Sun. if M$ had to develop its own JVM's ... well, never mind, it wouldn't bother. And although there's certainly some impressive OS/FS Java stuff out there (e.g. Kaffe) it still helps an awful lot that Sun does most of the work for the platform.

      I've always been puzzled by Sun's attitude toward this.
    • A preview of 1.4.0 will be made available at WWDC, according to Apple.
    • I think you are misunderstanding something.

      This was not an update to Java 1.3.1, it is an update of the MacOS X JVM, which has been running Java 1.3.1 for a while.

      Many of the bug fixes here will benefit Apple's implementation of Java 1.4. Apple has been working hard to get their JVM up to snuff and get the hardware Swing acceleration working reliably.

      Remember, too, that you cannot de-couple completely the OS and the JVM. This update required that you have the OS X 10.1.3 update already installed.

      Someone else said that Apple will have a preview version of 1.4 available at WWDC in May and I'd expect that the production version will probably be part of OS X 10.2 sometime this summer.

    • Just so you know, 1.3.1 has been out for months for Mac OS X too- this is just an update to it- bug fixes. 1.3.1 shipped with the os last March.

      Apple has publicly announced ( on the mrj-dev mailing list ) that they are working on 1.4, and that a preview will be available in May.

      It's also worth noting that the VM that ships with Mac OS X comes with features that 1.4 includes- such as sharing runtime resources, and graphics improvments.

      -gus
    • A lot of us are wondering about 1.4. Some time ago, Allen Denison of Apple posted this message [apple.com] on Apple's Java-dev list which answers a lot of your concerns.

      The short: they are prioritizing getting it right over getting it fast, but closing the release gap between Sun's and Apple's Java updates is a major goal for Apple. They are actively working on 1.4, and general speculation is that it will be available Q2.

      And yes, as numerous others have pointed out, 1.3.1 has been out for OS X for about five months. This is just a patch to 1.3.1.
    • Ok, before this new update the Java Runtime was already at 1.3.1. This update just made that faster and more stable in some areas. It is my guess that Apple will also have 1.4 coming out around the time MacOS 10.2 is released.

      That said, I am running Netbeans to do Java development on my white iBook and it works great. With this new update it makes it much more reasonable in terms of speed and responsiveness. And I am glad to have an alternative to Windows for Java.

      As for applications being released for Java 1.4, that is just stupid. It just came out and there surely will not be applications already based on 1.4. Most will safely lag behind at 1.3.1 where it is stable while 1.4 becomes more established. It also takes time for developers to take advantage of the new features in 1.4. From what I read of your post, you do not understand the nature of software development.

      Being the most up to date with the latest Java spec is not always an advantage for an application. Often is bases it on a loose foundation which is not proven. And from what I have seen of 1.4, it just integrated several Java frameworks which you can simply include as Jar files with 1.3.1 level applications. Nothing will keep someone from deploying an application with the same abilities to a 1.4 vs a 1.3.1 level runtime.
  • fyi, this update has solved all the problems that i was having printing from excel. i had re installed drives, re selected printers and anything else you could think of with no improvement. after this update excel for x prints like a dream
  • The Developer Tools Update [apple.com] that accompanies this Java release are also available at Apple's site. It's a 10.5MB download. Cut from the website:
    About Java 1.3.1 Update 1 Developer Tools


    This version of the Java Developer Tools contains updates to documentation, templates, examples, and tools from previous releases.

    For detailed documentation, see http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/java/

    Requirements
    This Java update requires Mac OS X version 10.1.3 and the Java 1.3.1 Update 1. The December 2001 Developer Tools should also be installed before running this update.
  • If you look in the known issues section here (http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/java/ReleaseN otes/java131update1/OpenBugs/index.html [apple.com]), you'll notice this:

    Workaround: There currently is none. This issue should be addressed with JDK1.4's support for headless operation.

    in more than one of the bug reports. If they're putting off fixes until the 1.4 release, then 1.4 must not be that far off, and this will be the last 1.3.x release.

    All I can say is, WOOHOO!!! :-)
  • Does this update include any improvements for Cocoa-Java?

    peperone

    PS: I don't need Objective-C evangelists preaching to me right now.

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