Gosling Reacts To Apple's Java Deprecation 436
Kurofuneparry writes "Apple has announced that Java is deprecated as of the most recent update to OS X. This shot across the bow is getting some responses. To Jobs' claim that 'Sun (now Oracle) supplies Java for all other platforms,' James Gosling is quoted as saying that 'simply isn't true.' Much talk of a coming turf war is to be had. This certainly can't be unrelated to statements from Jobs recently covered on this website and is sure to make waves. Apple has enjoyed significant success recently accompanied by a widespread sense that they can do no wrong in business or design. However, is deprecating Java a mistake? It doesn't take much insight to connect the dots and see that Apple has starting marking friends and enemies relative to the increasingly heated fight for mobile and other platforms."
Re:What are the negative consequences? (Score:3, Insightful)
The side-effects are that Java developers won't use Macs. (Since I use neither Java nor Apple products, I don't really care that mcuh, but I think Apple might be shooting itself in the foot.)
Of much more concern is the App store for Mac OS X idea. Apple is turning Mac OS X into a closed iPhone-like system. I guess my anti-Apple rant [skoll.ca] will soon apply to Mac OS X as well as the iP* systems.
Oh honestly (Score:2, Insightful)
It seems to have become trendy again to hate Apple no matter what, but this is getting ridiculous. Why is it that Apple is expected to be the only platform vendor that has to maintain their own version of the JVM for free? Jobs is quite correct in saying that Java under OS X has long lagged behind the latest official Sun release. I wish it was more common for Apple to leave more components to third parties now that they've got more market share. Another example would be graphics drivers, which lag tremendously in both performance and features. I don't understand why on Earth any Java dev would want to be stuck indefinitely with Apple's outdated implementation that by definition would never be a major priority rather then get a version from the main organization behind it. For that matter I blame Sun's longstanding ambivalence toasted FOSS. If we had a fully open GPL edition of the JVM that was best of class like we should have gotten years ago, this never would have been an issue in the first place. It's yet another tech Sun's BS has screwed us on, with their insistance to out ZFS under the CDDL rather then Apache/BSD/LGPL being another major example. Anyone still have that old sun strategy wheel, from before 'acquisition' became their final exit?
Yes and No... (Score:4, Insightful)
Given that their marketshare has grown, and Sun/Oracle does a decent and/or better than Apple did job of keeping it updated for other supported platforms, it seems likely that support will actually improve.
However, in the case of Apple, it isn't hard (or, typically, incorrect) to view anything that they do as being in service of their single-vendor-golden-cage control freak ideology. On the mobile, it is cryptographically enforced. On the desktop, the intent seems fairly clear to start with the soft sell "The Apple Store isn't the only way, just the best one" saith Jobs, and abrupt terminations of distribution of 3rd party technology are likely part of that.
Server/corporate users of OSX, rare but not nonexistent beasts, should be celebrating right now, since they'll now have actual Java, not Apple half-assery; but it is also likely the case that this is an attempt to make java an even more obscure and peripheral aspect of the OSX experience in general(in the same way that x11 is available; but is considered about as "un-Apple" as firing up Parallels, and probably less common).
Re:No definite transition plan (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What are the negative consequences? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What are the negative consequences? (Score:3, Insightful)
Then Oracle should get right on that if they want to truly be a common platform for all OS.
Re:Oh honestly (Score:3, Insightful)
Because it's their loss if they don't.
Windows has a major market already in business desktops, their JVM can't be dropped. Linux has a major market in the server business, their JVM can't be dropped. Apple has nothing to convince Oracle to support their JVM.
Because the main organization doesn't have such version, and probably won't in the future even with this announcement. What's Oracle business case for supporting it?
OpenJDK has been GPL for two years now. And there is [bikemonkey.org] an OSS BSD port of the JVM that runs on the Mac. The problem is that converting it to use the Mac's libraries instead if X11 and so it's hard work.
If someone is causing trouble, it's Apple for not releasing their JVM as OSS.
Re:Cost to support benefit (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically, Sun never supported Java on the Mac, Apple did. Apple provided the developers, the tools, apple did all the work, and then paid Sun for the privilege. (it costs money to make sure your JVM was approved).
With oracle now suing every other Java implementation out there that wasn't approved Apple probably thought it just wasn't worth it. Expensive to do, costs money to do it, and unless your sending money up to oracle yearly, now a patent nightmare mess.
Look at it this way a side effect might be that Oracle stops suing non oracle approved JVM's, including Davik. The Bad press might be more than they realize.
Re:Apple and the future (Score:1, Insightful)
and I didn't post because I wasn't into broadcasting a webcam.
Then they came for the Java,
and I didn't blog because I wasn't a programmer.
Then they came for OS X,
and I didn't tweet because I wasn't a Mac Pro owner.
Then they came for the keyboard.
and by that time no one was left to bleet.
Re:Oh honestly (Score:4, Insightful)
That was also back when Sun worked with other JVM's, as opposed to suing them out of existence like Oracle is doing. Apple probably lost those engineers and Oracle probably came to them and said now you have to pay us for the privilege.
Why are we blaming Apple when it's Oracle's policies that driving this particular change.
Re:Antitrust lawsuit? (Score:3, Insightful)
The issue here isn't Java itself but the fact that this is a prelude to treating Java applications like some sort of pariah by being excluded from the "Mac Store" and being excluded from Apple's new answer to apt-get.
This is about treating Java-in-general as a second class citizen on MacOS.
Re:Antitrust lawsuit? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is about treating Java-in-general as a second class citizen on MacOS.
It is and has for a long time been a second-class citizen on Mac OS X. I can think of no major (or even many minor) applications for the OS X platform that are written in Java. It hasn't proven itself necessary. It's costly and difficult for Apple to maintain for no tangible benefit when they can simply provide the hooks for the actual owner of Java to implement their own package if they so desire.
Where's the beef?
Re:Cost to support benefit (Score:5, Insightful)
Really (Score:4, Insightful)
I develop Java on Windows quite well thank you. Yes there was a dust up, when MIcrosoft tied to grab a hold of the language through proprietary VM, but they lost that suit and Windows remains a great platform for Java development and likely to stay that way, otherwise many customers like me will simply migrate to Ubuntu or another system capable of running Java, which would further erode Windows market share, particularly in the business applications market.
Thats why Apple wants to kill Java. They don't believe in end-users having that kind of choice. For them software and computer gadgets are all about closed and captive, rather than open markets. Just check out the dearth of really useful, but incredibly expensive stuff in the iPhone apps market that only do things that are Apple-approved. For many end users thats fine as they just want a cool app or gadget that works. They have no real technical understanding beyond pressing "buttons". They do other things with their lives.
Apple has become the trendy tech for the non-technical. Apple sees their market there rather than in general purpose computer manufacturing. Its a good move for Jobs. In his lifetime, things are likely to pretty much stay that way. For people who expand the boundaries of what you can do with computing technology Apple is becoming a closed, shrinking market, except for those developing games and trendy gizmo, entertainment software. For them in the long run Apple is increasingly becoming a dead market for significant technical innovation. For folks who are primarily interested in web-centric technical computing, Apple is really longer "cool" and really has no future, which is not the same thing as saying they won't have a sizable market or profits for some time to come. Look at Sony and Nintendo, they are still making money, but no one would claim they serve as development platforms for innovate software other than games and video entertainment.
Re:Cost to support benefit (Score:5, Insightful)
The reasoning SJ gave for dropping it though was precicely that it wasn't keeping up – if apple maintain it, it's constantly one version behind as they get the new source and patch it into their JVM... If oracle do it, it stays nice and up to date all the time.
Exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
You an run the core product, but only a few of the modules that really provide the power to the OO platform, like highly integrated database-document interaction. But the vast majority of Apple users generally don't have those kinds of technical skills anyway.
Open office is a basically a business application designed to serve as an open alternative to the basic Microsoft suite of business products. Apple sees its future in the trendy gadget, cool phones and vido-games markets, not in general technical/business computing. As a percentage of their sales, developers are just a tiny fraction of their user-base, so why go through the extra expense of catering to them, when you can develop a closed-shop end-user general consumer market instead?
Re:Bleet! (Score:4, Insightful)
That's it!
Make a service called Bleeter! "The Voice of the Sheep!" You can get modded if other Sheep like your Bleet!
Maybe we can get Yasmine Bleeth to advertise for it.
Re:Objective-C is deprecated (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think you are using the word "deprecated" correctly. I think you mean "obsolete" or "old", but not "deprecated".
Objective-C is not deprecated because neither Apple nor its original developers have deprecated it. Deprecation is the act of marking a software as having been superseded, and recommended that its use be avoided. It requires an agency to have denoted it so. Whereas "obsolete" is simply an adjective that does not require an agency.
Re:What are the negative consequences? (Score:5, Insightful)
The side-effects are that Java developers won't use Macs. (Since I use neither Java nor Apple products, I don't really care that mcuh, but I think Apple might be shooting itself in the foot.)
Of much more concern is the App store for Mac OS X idea. Apple is turning Mac OS X into a closed iPhone-like system. I guess my anti-Apple rant [skoll.ca] will soon apply to Mac OS X as well as the iP* systems.
Keep ranting. Nobody gives a shit.
Users want to be able to install apps with one click and have them just work, whether they are native apps or Web apps. Apple has done a ton of work to enable that on both their own Cocoa platform and the common HTML5 platform, which they have done at least as much as anybody else to realize. Apps that depend on Flash or Java don't fit this model. Not only are there various versions of the runtimes which may or may not run the app you're trying to use, and not only are there various security issues that come up regularly, the user is expected to play I-T guy and sort that all out.
If you are a Java developer, you can run Java on your own server and provide an HTML5 interface on the client, or a Cocoa interface on Apple platforms. That is how Apple themselves use Java. Cocoa and HTML5 both have auto installs and auto updates built-in, and are therefore consistent with consumer use. Whatever is on the server can be as nerdy as you like, but what is on the client has to be consumer grade. Flash and Java are not consumer grade.
Understand that Apple makes consumer products. Would you expect a TV or DVD Player to have Flash and Java and expect the user to update them regularly? That is insanity. So you're not going to have those runtimes on iPads and MacBooks either. These devices don't have I-T support people. The users don't know what Flash or Java is.
So you missed the point entirely. Apple's App Stores are not about being closed, they are about working for consumers 100% of the time with absolutely zero I-T work. Apple makes very, very little money from App Store. The incentive is not to close it, but rather to make it work perfectly. Same with Apple's Web app platform, which is 100% open it's pure W3C HTML5 and ISO MPEG-4 media so that it works 100% of the time for consumers with zero I-T work. You don't need various browsers you switch to for some sites, you don't need to update your Flash or Java, you don't need to download codecs, the one in your GPU is the only one you need. Flash and Java don't make the cut in consumer computing. Blaming Apple for that is just denialism, a way to put your nerd head in the sand and wish the clock would turn back.
Re:Apple and the future (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple has made PLENTY of bad design decisions. Plenty of lists: here [v3.co.uk], here [telegraph.co.uk], etc.
-- Barbie
Re:Antitrust lawsuit? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is about treating Java-in-general as a second class citizen on MacOS.
It is and has for a long time been a second-class citizen on Mac OS X.
Java has been third-class for a LONG time, on pretty much every platform. Even flash gets WAY more attention.
You could remove Java from most people's PCs and the only side effect would be more disk space.
And on that "universal" platform known as the web browser? When's the last time you used a java applet? Is anyone who doesn't live in mom's basement even writing them any more?
-- Barbie
Re:No Big Deal Really (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not a big deal really.
Software developers aren't really all that important to Apple market share anymore as they have been moving toward becoming more of a source for trendy tech gadgets rather than a major force in computer driven software for some time now. They intend to phase out of computers completely as there is more money to be made with iPhones, toy tablets and other trendy gizmos. They see no future in the business world of databases, web-development and science-based applications, but rather in the end-user market phone, games and entertainment space. Apple intends not to compete with Microsoft or Linux. With OS X, their primary targets are increasingly Sony, Nitendo, Nokia, Samsung and the like.
Lets face it modern American youth are really no longer receiving the kind of educations that they would need to remain current in the computer-tech world. Jobs is just adapting to market realities and the fact he has a captive market of folks who recognize that they can't really be "cool" unless they buy Apple products.
You have no idea what you are blathering about. Apple is in no way getting out of computers. As always, they simply do not sell computers to I-T, they sell them to consumers and creatives. Nobody else fills that need.
The apps that sell to iOS users are made on Macs. iOS itself is made on Macs. The music and movies that sell to iOS users are made on Macs. Apple is the leading provider of pro video editing tools by volume, and the leading provider of consumer video editing tools by volume. They are the leading provider of music and audio editing tools by volume. All of this stuff runs only on the Mac. They are the leading provider of graphics workstations. They sell 90% of the high-end Intel PC's sold every year. They sell 20% of the Intel PC's sold at US retail every year, in spite of having no low end model. Their Mac business by itself would be 110 in the Fortune 500 if it were a standalone company. It is not only not going away, it is growing and it is more important than ever.
Java doesn't have anything to do with any of this. The concerns of I-T and Slashdot nerds don't have anything to do with all of this. Get it through your head that there are computer users that are not part of the I-T market and the Mac is the computer for those users. Not because it is trendy (you moron) but because it satisfies the needs of those users. It has a pro video subsystem, a pro audio subsystem, a pro graphics subsystem, a pro Web development subsystem, it can be maintained without I-T support. None of those things are true of any other computer.
It is absolutely wonderful if your computing needs are satisfied with a generic box running Ubuntu, but grow up enough to realize that other users needs are only satisfied with a Mac.
Re:What are the negative consequences? (Score:3, Insightful)
And by way, the open source JVMs are not as incomplete as you imagine, considering they are being used by the majority of Disney's internet engineering team to develop the infrastructure.
It depends on whether they're doing the GUI parts. The non-GUI parts of Java are relatively easy to keep in synch, as OSX looks enormously like other Unixes. But the GUI parts are difficult, as the OSX GUI model is quite different to that used in both classic Unix/X11 and Windows. That wouldn't be a problem for an internet engineering team - GUIs aren't needed for doing servers - but it does mean that the incompleteness is likely to be patchy; some apps will be much more heavily affected than others (and GUI apps will probably bear the brunt).
Flamebait, seriously? MOD UP (Score:3, Insightful)
It's amazing how much of the geek community is completely at a loss for why Apple is so successful. Somehow it's impossible that the user experience they provide is what people want so it must be their marketing.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bleet! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What are the negative consequences? (Score:3, Insightful)
If they don't care about OSX then why do they release their database server for it?
Re:Oh honestly (Score:2, Insightful)
Unfortunately, as Gosling correctly points out, the claim that apple is the only one doing this is simply not true. IBM, HP, and many other vendors supply their own implementation of Java for their hardware/systems
Not quite. Jobs was talking about consumer desktop systems, but Gosling seems to be talking about enterprise systems. If I go down to Walmart or Bestbuy and pick up an HP computer, does it come with HP Java? If not, do I download Java from HP? No, I download from Oracle. Same with desktop Linux. Same with Windows. Apple is the only consumer desktop system that's not using Java built by Oracle or using OpenJDK.
Re:What are the negative consequences? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ok. Let me indulge a little paranoia. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes and No... (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple's integrated approach is what sells their products. It's what users pay for. Users don't care about Java, they care about 1-click installs that always just work with great user interfaces and full performance and the best battery life on their hardware. They care about being required to do zero configuration, zero I-T work. They absolutely do not want to have an app fail because they need to install or update a Java or Flash runtime. Cocoa and HTML5 do not require that and that is why they are the technologies that Apple supports. For all the complaints that iPhone is closed or locked down, it is by far the best open HTML5 platform and the Mac is the only name-brand PC that ships with an HTML5 browser, and Apple has been doing that since 2003, since before HTML5 was even called HTML5.
So it's not about open or closed, because HTML5 is more open than Java. As always with Apple, it's about a better user experience. That is what sells their products. People can get a shitty user experience from any other vendor.
Re:Cost to support benefit (Score:1, Insightful)
I see Java as the new Cobol.
Re:Cost to support benefit (Score:3, Insightful)
The 'outrage' in the media surprises me. Maybe I'm confused, but I don't believe that Microsoft includes java on any of their platforms. Why isn't the media wound up about that?
Re:Cost to support benefit (Score:3, Insightful)
If they want to crush cross-platform development, then why aren't they moving to crush C or C++? Since C++ apps will run on just about every desktop and mobile platform out there (besides Blackberry).
Re:Cost to support benefit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cost to support benefit (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's lowball the estimate, and say that the engineer's cost to the organization (desk space, salary, benefits, hardware, networking costs, phone, electricity, everything else - TCO, in other words) is in the order of ~150k per year. You and I both know that's low (HR estimates at my company place the value of 1 engineer for a year at about 250k), but let's assume it's much lower.
Figure you get about 2000 hours per year of work out of that engineer (40 hrs / week, 50 weeks a year) - that means the company is paying $75 per hour the developer works.
Now let's say that that setup is $3000 more expensive than an equivalent PC - the equivalent of 40 extra hours worth of work (75/hr * 40 hrs = $3000).
So how do we determine the point at which the company would break even on this investment? Most hardware is depreciated over 3 years. So... they'd have to get the equivalent of 40 hours extra of work out of the developer over 3 years, or 13.33... hours per year of extra productivity out of the more expensive system, to break even - roughly speaking, a ~0.7% efficiency gain, assuming 2000 hours worked each year - in other words, do 2013.33... hours of work in the time it would have taken previously to do 2000 hours of work.
Do you think that a developer being given a Unix desktop environment that he prefers, and the Unix environment which he's familiar with, would be able to squeeze ~4 minutes worth of extra productivity out of each work day? Shit, I spend that long just booting my system up & signing in while all the virus scans and security settings apply in the morning. I regularly spend that much time waiting for files to transfer around to a UNIX system so I can work on the files on the remote system, because my laptop runs windows.
Obviously, there's other costs to the organization as well, for supporting these additional desktops... but let's be honest here - you can easily make a strong case that spending a little bit more money on a better quality tool is an *investment* in increased productivity & increased savings over the life of the tool. You can't look at sticker price in a vacuum, and say "Mac > Windows PC, therefore robbery."
Re:Cost to support benefit (Score:3, Insightful)
Basically, Sun never supported Java on the Mac, Apple did. Apple provided the developers, the tools, apple did all the work, and then paid Sun for the privilege. (it costs money to make sure your JVM was approved).
With oracle now suing every other Java implementation out there that wasn't approved Apple probably thought it just wasn't worth it. Expensive to do, costs money to do it, and unless your sending money up to oracle yearly, now a patent nightmare mess.
Look at it this way a side effect might be that Oracle stops suing non oracle approved JVM's, including Davik. The Bad press might be more than they realize.
I was thinking the same thing. Oracle is becoming too lawyer-trigger happy with Java, and even if I was "safe" under some agreement I still would back out before they found a loophole to try to sue me over too. Besides, there is heavy chance their licensing agreement has ties to OS versions, and the upcoming Lion OSX forced revisions with terms Apple did not agree with.
Re:Apple isn't doing Sun's work for them.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Your implication with this statement is that Apple is actually blocking Java on OS X, but that's completely untrue. You act as if it's Apple's obligation to be providing a JVM. It's none of Apple's problem that Sun never did. Apple was doing them a favor by providing their own JVM all these years. Keeping it updated wouldn't be any more difficult than any other third-party updater. Right now, Mac apps already use their own updaters, often through a framework called Sparkle.
Your dismissal of these points as "a good Apple PR position" doesn't change the fact that Apple has never stopped anyone from providing a JVM. In fact, here's a third-party port of BSD Java [bikemonkey.org] for the Mac.
If Oracle wants Java on OS X, they can do it themselves like they already do for Windows. Absolutely nothing is stopping them.
Re:What are the negative consequences? (Score:3, Insightful)
The side-effects are that Java developers won't use Macs. (Since I use neither Java nor Apple products, I don't really care that mcuh, but I think Apple might be shooting itself in the foot.)
Of much more concern is the App store for Mac OS X idea. Apple is turning Mac OS X into a closed iPhone-like system. I guess my anti-Apple rant [skoll.ca] will soon apply to Mac OS X as well as the iP* systems.
Prediction: Even if, ten years from now, the Mac platform is still just as open and general purpose as it was prior to the invention of the Mac App Store concept, people like you will continue to make factually baseless comments like this and continue to be modded "Insightful" on a daily basis during the entire intervening ten years.
If Apple is actually stupid enough to try and lock down a general purpose computing platform that is competing with other general purpose computing platforms, I will be happy to eat my words. In the meantime, every idiot who thinks the entire Mac platform is going to suddenly turn into some sort of locked-down extension of the iPhone next summer is _severely_ deluded. The Mac App Store is just going to be a bonus to the platform, not a restriction, and will make a ton of developers very, very rich in the next few years.
Oh, and totally on topic, Oracle will put out their own JVM for Mac and by a year from now nobody will even be questioning Apple's decision to stop making their own JVM which Java developers were always complaining about anyway because it was constantly one version behind.
Maybe it's just me, but lately the Slashdot community really seems to be in the practice of making mountains out of molehills, even more so than usual. Perspective seems to be all but lost around here anymore.
Re:Cost to support benefit (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd mod you up if I had the points. A tool's a tool, and if your employees work best with one brand over another and it's such a small cost, you're wasting your time.
This all goes back to the post a while ago about specing out 1000 PCs for a governmental department, and some people earnestly thought it would be worth it to build your own. Insane! Find out what you really need and buy the right tool for the job and be willing to pay for it to work well. If you buy shoddy tools, expect them to hurt your bottom line in more ways than one.