back to article Gosling blows lid off Jobs Java nonsense

Steve Jobs has apparently weighed into the debate over Apple's decision to deprecate Java on the Mac, and his terse explanation was promptly deprecated by Java founder James Gosling. According to MacRumors.com, a concerned Java developer emailed the Apple cult leader on Thursday to ask about Apple's plans for the platform, and …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Horns

    In your face...

    So all these Mac evangelists are now eating their words... Well, I hope you didn't spend too much on your shiny toys. You have yourselves to blame, as you voted unwisely with your wallets.

    But I can't say I'm surprised. In fact, you should not be surprised if this happens for other technologies as well in the future, e.g. Mono. Apple wants to control everything.

    Some people just don't get it. Apple has become evil.

    1. ThomH

      Actually I would be quite surprised

      If Apple made Mono a standard component of the OS, taking over all responsibility for its ongoing development, then cancelled their version. Did you actually read the article? Apple hasn't banned Java from OS X, it's said it will no longer maintain its JVM and made no comment as to whether it'll release the source. There's now a substantial risk that nobody else will bother, which is why this is as newsworthy as it is.

      Really nothing to do with the way Mono works at all then. And it's very difficult to see how this could happen with any other technology in the future, since there are no other obvious candidates.

      1. Sandtitz Silver badge
        Thumb Down

        Re: ThomH

        Apple hasn't, and cannot (in the near future) ban Java from OS X, but their statement that Java-based apps cannot be sold in the App Store really is a kick in the groin area. If the App Store works as well for Apple as it did in Iphone's case, a lot of small to medium size software will move under its umbrella and the average Joe Sixpack's out there will gradually learn to install their software only thru the App Store -> no future for Java apps under OS X.

        1. ThomH

          @Sandtitz

          That's not technically true; Apple have said they won't accept software that makes use of deprecated OS components for the pending Mac App Store. Apple's Java is now a deprecated component. However, in the hypothetical situation that somebody else supplies a JVM packager, you could release a suitably packaged Java app. Apple's concern (officially) is that software on the store should be able to run even if they revoke the deprecated components.

          I guess it's comparable, so see how use of the Flash packager and the equivalent array of Appcelerator, Unity and emulation-based tools are now explicitly allowed on the iPhone.

          I think I basically agree with you; my feeling is that Apple's power play is the store. That's the thing to be angry about and that's the thing on which to base anti-Apple sentiment.

          The Java deprecation is just their usual lust for throwing out parts they don't consider useful, as with the Java bindings about half a decade ago and Carbon more recently. Possibly the most interesting thing to come out of the comments, and especially the up/down votes, is how blinkered people are that they're seemingly intellectually incapable of grasping how the Java situation differs from the situation with Mono (unrelated) or even the unbundling of the Flash runtime (vaguely related, but not really).

          1. Adam T

            @ThomH

            I hope you're right, because I read it as Apple won't allow languages on App Store that aren't kept up to date by them.

            An application may be written with up-to-date Java tomorrow, but it can become deprecated the day after. The fact that a third-party Java won't be included in standard Software Update means it's depracted in Apple's eyes regardless.

            Having been on the receiving end of some stupendously ignorant support emails with their current App Store reviewers - and bizarrely two of them will rarely say the same thing, I'd believe anything is possible.

            1. ThomH

              @Adam T

              That gets an upvote from me. I'm more than happy to condemn them for things they have actually done or are actually doing. But it's difficult to talk about that stuff when the rabid mob prefer to level any old charge they care to invent and then upvote it about 30 times.

              Of course you're absolutely right; I was imagining that someone might put a packager together that builds a JVM other than Apple's own and places it into an application bundle with the Java program you actually want to distribute, or alternatively compiles your Java program to native code. So your only OS dependencies are Cocoa, giving you no trouble from the Apple police under the current licence per my understanding.

              That is, hypothetically, if somebody were to put such a packager or compiler together (there's a Java to native compiler in the GCC chain but I'd be surprised if library support wasn't an issue) and Apple are to keep the licence consistent in this area (which they probably will, having had to about face on the iPhone language restrictions).

              I'm not saying it's not a kick in the teeth for Java developers, especially as Java was a first class citizen when OS X launched.

    2. sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD
      Jobs Horns

      Evil

      "Some people just don't get it. Apple has become evil."

      Become evil? I thought Apple has been evil for at least the past 20 years... ;)

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      What a prat

      It's irrelevant whether or not Apple provide a JDK. People will just switch to OpenJDK or whatever.

      The speed and violence with which you leap on this perceived opportunity to attack Mac users is weird though. Hint of jealousy? Bitched about Macs so much that you now feel so entrenched in your opinion that you can't get one even though you really, really want one?

      Some people just don't get it. Using words like good and evil to describe capitalist companies is like using the phrase "value for money" to describe something that's as cheap as it it tacky.

      1. PoorLumpyPony

        Extremely accurate header

        For the rest of the post you made.

    4. jai

      re: In your face...

      "So all these Mac evangelists are now eating their words..."

      Not at all.

      There is a simple to solution to this: go learn Objective-C and then you can build your apps in X-code. Not that we want your crappy apps on our beloved hardware anyway so jog on you javatard!

      1. marcelo
        Big Brother

        that's the spirit!

        ...and always has been!!!

  2. blackworx

    Audacious

    If nothing else Jobs seems truly to believe he can win the long game and kill all the stuff he doesn't want messing up his garden, and with a bit of luck (for him) not just on his platforms.

    Personally I prefer my gardens au naturel, the type you don't get charged a gate fee to enter only to be told repeatedly and in no uncertain terms to keep your scum feet off the manicured lawns.

    Apple has become a hyper-autistic version of Microsoft, circa 2002.

  3. Mike OReilly

    Simple solution

    Just don't bother with Macs. The world can go on without Macs.

    1. Maliciously Crafted Packet

      The world can go on without Macs

      No shit man, I suppose it could. And then we could all live in JAVA Nirvana.

      Oh wait... I've just realised why it couldn't. Because without Apple and the Mac IT innovation would be dead. Or at least dead as far as OS and GUI design are concerned. Because from where Im standing I don't see any.

      All I can see is a landscape of me too and copy cat merchants far off into the horizon all the way from Windows to Android.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I feel your argument but...

        The reality of the situation is the cat is out of the bag. Any idiot with the most basic understand of gtk (or whatever else fill in the blank ) can MAKE a windows manager. If anything this nonsense of GUI patents needs to end for the WORLDS MONETARY SAKE. Did they make the mouse interface? I think XEROX did...

      2. Bod
        Coffee/keyboard

        Apple Innovation in IT

        Lol, nearly couldn't stop laughing. There's not much Apple have "innovated" that isn't copied in some form from someone else. Meanwhile there are hundreds of thousands of things in IT that Apple has nothing to do with.

        Innovation also implies that others will adopt the idea and it becomes the new way of thinking. Steve's aim now is to make everything exclusive to Apple and reject anything that competitors may use or that doesn't fit in with an ideal. That's not innovation.

        1. zeke

          Theyve invented plenty of things..

          Oh come on now, you are being mean.

          Apple invented many things like the GUI, the mouse, the personal computer, the mp3 player, the smartphone, JavaScriptCore, Webkit and of course tablets.

          Had it not been for them, all these things wouldnt exist.

          </sarcasm>

    2. Chris Parsons

      Too true

      I run an IT support business and have a couple of Macs just so that we can understand how they work. I really just don't see what the fuss is about...it's a computer, it works. Compared to anything running Windows, it's an expensive computer. The usual retort is how unreliable Windows is...we support maybe 300 desktops, on the whole, no problem. If you want something different, and cheap, and reliable...try Linux.

    3. zeke
      Pint

      The only good Mac is a Big one

      >Just don't bother with Macs. The world can go on without Macs.

      Not without Big Macs it can't.

      Apple's Mac are limited to US and somewhat in a few euro countries.

      The Big Mac is found in every country in the planet it seems.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Raise your hands Mac owners who bought the kit only to run Java

    Go on raise them...though so minority in the masses of Mac kit owners.

    Java programmers.. not as important as they say they are in the grand scheme of things.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      "Only to run Java?"

      Bull. That isn't any form of requirement. I can show you several thousand folk who were sold Macs because "It's the best platform to do design/photography/graphic arts of any variety on!"

      The hell of it is, there are lots of tools in these areas that rely on Java. From order entry software (such as that supplied by my company to our customers - one which is largely a standard in our industry) to various bits of image manipulation or calculation gear. I've even seem some printer driver interfaces for the larger professional inkjets rely on Java.

      Just because you didn't buy your Mac "only to run Java" doesn't mean this won't bite you in the ass. There are a lot of small and medium businesses here that will get burned. Folk without the resources to have applications they bought recoded or the knowhow to find alternatives.

      The whole thing is short-sighted and asinine. I hope Jobs twists for this.

    2. Steve Loughran

      I did for home

      I got an iMac at home so I had a unix /Java Dev system while the other family members could have a home PC, one that let me restrict the hours a day an 8 year old could use it, and which was more secure and less painful than Vista.

      Going forward: Ubuntu at home as well as at work. I'll end up being the one to add child controls to gnome.

      One user group not covered here are CS students. Java is a key language they get taught, and Jobs has just said "we dont want computing students to use our computers". I don't know if that is wise or not.

  5. stu 4
    Jobs Halo

    so ?

    java has had it's day.

    I've been in the java biz since the start. I was in the nextstep biz before that...

    java will have a place in the enterprise for some time, but it was never a big thing on the consumer device.

    Sure - it will be important to maintain a developer env for enterprise apps - but this can as easily be through vmware as native - I use my MBP every day at work with a client build on a VM.

    I don't see the problem. the ease of objective C coding via X code has really resulted in java being dead on osx for the last 5+ years. There's not COM+ or DLL hell here, and unlike .NET there was no requirement to have .NET compliant runtimes, etc, etc - for once Stevey 'I must control the world' Jobs had a point if you ask me.

    These days you'd have to be mental to write java code for windows or .net - its an enterprise only solution - the new cobol if you like.

    stu

    p.s el reg needs to update the steve icons - he's far too far in them.

    1. sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD
      Stop

      "java has had it's day."

      I wouldn't be too sure about that now, to be honest.

      Granted it's google flavoured java, but java nonetheless appears to have found another niche in Android.

      I will admit, if it wasn't for Android I would never have looked at java again.

      I don't know about being mental writing java for the desktop now. Years ago, I would have totally agreed. But java has improved quite a bit since then. It's not *too* bad at present, if benchmarks are to be believed, with a good jitter, they say you'll get 'reasonble' performance. If this is mostly true, aside from its monumental memory footprint, shrug, it may be acceptable....

      We shall see.

      1. Narg

        Java is bad. always has been.

        Java is bad. period. It's had it day many many days ago. And, no Java has not improved to a point that it even comes close to more modern languages. Unless you lay off the Java pipe and look around, you just won't see anything different. And, trust me, it's different. Sooooo much different.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          So what are you going to replace it with?

          Where's your cross-platform, open, mature replacement?

          I have a Java team for cross-platform multi-threaded apps that can't go down. I'm always looking for alternatives. We've played with .NET and mono a few times. Ha. Where's this replacement you allude to without actually naming?

          Your post makes you sound like a stupid kid. I wait with bated breath for your reply. If it's Rails, I might have to hunt you down...

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Badgers

        RE: java has had it's day

        That, and TS had underestimated the amount of cheap iClones and lower end Nokias in the market.

        Even on my N97, most of the games on the Ovi store are Java-based (Nokia dying? Not in many parts of Europe and Asia, where there are entire cults the size of states dedicated to Nokia. My sister is one of them. Refuses to touch any phone that is not a Nokia). And my dad recently bought an iPhone clone from India on the grounds that it was cheap. Guess what? It runs Java as well.

        What about the Blu-Ray players, and of course, Google's Dalvik?

        And yes, large enterprises use Java as well. The payroll and expense system at the company I work for uses it extensively. Also, many colleges still teach Java to students.

        So Java dying off? Wish it would since Oracle is evil and Java it has been used for evil with the inception of the BD+ encryption architecture, but there's nothing that can be done, unless someone can come up with a better "compile once, run on any architecture" solution that is truly cross-platform.

    2. vic 4
      WTF?

      COM+/DDL Hell

      Your java experience is obviously wider thna mine, in the 10+ years I've bene doing java development I have never had any com/ddl hell issues, but then again why would I.

      Before people jump in about "classpath hell", this has been a sovled problem for a number of years no and was never an issue for any real development team who actually follow some sort of quality control rather than just hacking their way through it.

  6. Eddie 4
    Paris Hilton

    P*ss off Apple

    I migrated from Windows to Mac some 2 years ago, not least because the Mac platform is closer to my average Java deployment platform (*nix) than the windows OS I was using.

    However, increasingly I've become concerned with the attitude of Jobs - its reminiscent of Micro$haft's "embrace & extend" - monopolistic, arrogant and anti competitive. Now this announcement is the final staw - I'm not gonna upgrade my MBP, instead I'm going to either look at a Linux laptop or even Windows 7 - that's how p*ssed off I am.

    And no, Java ain't as powerful as it once appeared but it's still an important platform all the same. I do wonder if this is Job's taking a side swipe at Google & Android?

    Paris cause Jobs is screwing us all

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Glad to see Java going

    And I say that as someone that codes for Android and Crazy Uncle Larry's House of Big Orange Databases...

    Anon, of course.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    The danger of shiny

    "If the future of Java on Mac is in doubt, then I have no other choice than going the Linux way...all the work I've done trying to get all developers converting to Mac is undone."

    We've heard this before: Apple fanatics enthusing about shiny, twisting their friends' arms, downplaying the concerns about openness, vendor control, planned obsolescence, getting a bunch of people to "switch". Then, when they finally get screwed by Apple themselves, their chums have inherited the "platform evangelist" mindset, won't listen to the warnings, and are busy "converting" other people themselves.

    Insist on openness and control for yourself: ignore shiny-minded buffoons bearing Apple products!

  9. Law
    Unhappy

    my next laptop...

    ... won't be another macbook... not because of the java issues, but because I don't like the way it's all heading (osx, apple's iron-grip, etc). Will probably go for a souped-up Alienware or XPS.... who knows.

  10. John Sanders
    Flame

    But let's be honest

    JAVA as the JVM implementation (not the language) is a piece of bloated slow rubbish (like its clone .net/.mono).

    What gosling should have designed is a decent portable compiler for the C++ successor that was JAVA.

    Instead Saint Jobs and Mighty Google had to come to show how stupid, bloated, slow and useless the SUM stock JVM implementation is, implementing their own.

    So yes, let JAVA as a "running in a sandbox full of dog poo" die die die die die

    1. blackworx
      Pint

      Your comment

      Reminded me of the Royan character in Peter F Hamilton's Greg Mandel books.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      You have no idea what you're talking about

      The modern JIT is bloody amazing. Much of it is favourably comparable to compiled C code.

    3. Neill Mitchell

      This is not Flash

      Jobs may get away with dissing Flash as slow bloatware, but if he thinks he can employ the same tactic with Java then he is sorely mistaken. Java is too useful and too widely used for serious applications that people (probably unwittingly) use regularly.

      This, as always, is about control. How long will it be before Jobs decides that you can only buy apps for your Mac from the App Store? Even if he doesn't take that step, the cost of applications inevitably will rise as the developers re-coup their Apple fees.

      But hey, it's okay because Apple is doing this to protect it's poor customers from buggy software right. So why worry about personal freedom and choice.

      What worries me is that people are falling for it. The rose tinted glasses are getting thicker by the week.

  11. JonHendry

    Gosling isn't quite right about Windows

    "In the beginning, Microsoft provided Java for Windows"

    Nope. JDK 1.0 was available on Windows. It was released even before Microsoft licensed it. (Kim Polese's press release says Microsoft "intends to license Java".) Microsoft was never the sole provider of Java on Windows. Sun's JDK, including their JVM, was always available.

    If Sun hadn't put it on Windows themselves, I doubt anyone would have cared about it. It would have been seen as some Solaris thingy. It would have swept the world like NeWS did.

    Microsoft certainly wouldn't have cared. But because Sun was providing support, Microsoft knew they had to co-opt it, confuse the issue, and pee in Sun's soup.

    Polese's JDK 1.0 press release: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.java/browse_frm/thread/22284d73c66a543c/9295a58e480761d0?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=kim+polese+group:comp.lang.java.*&pli=1

    Or search google groups for message id: <9601232342.AA02818@849-news.portofino.Eng.Sun.COM>

    1. sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD
      Gates Horns

      Nope. JDK 1.0 was available on Windows... etc...

      I remember this to be true. Then we had M$ J++ etc...

      Also, you have a point about the likely popularity of Java if Sun hadn't provided a windows implementation.

      I tried to get into it then, but always found other excuses not to use Java to be honest. I

      might have to change my ways though since I bought an android phone. Java's not looking too bad on these, at least on first glance.

      1. Paul M 1

        Not only but also

        In fact, Microsoft originally only created a JVM for Windows NT. IBM actually created one for the Win 98 line as well as for Win NT.

        I may be wrong but I think they still do them for Win and Linux as well as AIX, iSeries and zSeries machines.

        So really, Stevie J is very very wrong.

  12. Bruce Hoult

    it's only the GUI, stupid

    Java has never had a good UI story anywhere. Java on the Mac was perhaps the best one, due to all the work Apple did (yes, probably using secret APIs) to integrate it tightly into OSX.

    If Apple stops support it (and who is really using Java for Cocoa development anyway), then it's no big loss.

    Anyone can port the regular JVM to OSX and write server and command line apps using databases, J2EE, the internet and so forth to their heart's content. In other words the same as any other platform with Java.

  13. Billl
    Pint

    Who really cares?

    The Java devs should care, but the nice thing about Java is that it does run on multiple platforms. The few Macs running in corporations will now be migrated to Ubuntu or Windows. No real loss to anyone but Apple and the few that actually liked running Macs.

    1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

      Have a look at universities

      A lot of my (computer science) students have Macbooks, many courses and much scientific software use Java. All these students will abandon Apple if this goes through. Apple will lose an important user base, because these students mainly go into IT business, and ultimately influence choices on equipment in the future.

      Piss them off at your peril.

      1. Chris Pearson

        Unlikely

        These students are unlikely to dump a ~£1k investment purely because of lack of Java support.

        The ones who need Java for their course will likely (or at least should) know how to duel boot or VM into windows or Linux (or single boot OpenBSD like my flat mate on his MacBook). Also I know of most the courses at my former are now dumping Java for C# so macs are screwed even then. Of course this lot can always attempt to use a lab computer but that's another problem.

        Those who need it for their courses will likely be design types and their lectures will be in the same boat as their labs will be full of iMacs. They will work around it.

        The ones who got it because "macs are cool" probably won't need Java either unless there's some random app or course tool they need in which case they may well be boned.

  14. Eddy Ito

    Why bother?

    "After deprecating Java, the company also announced that applications using deprecated technologies such as Java will not be allowed in the upcoming Mac App Store."

    Doesn't this also ban any implementation of Java from the MacAppstore as well? Even if it doesn't, what would be the point if you can't get apps from other places without jailbreaking your McBookends?

    That said, I'm starting to think switching to a Win7 laptop instead of getting a Mac IntelBook was a good idea.

    1. Franklin
      FAIL

      A title is required

      No jailbreaking is required. The Mac app store will not be the only place to get apps. (And really, most major apps won't be distributed that way anyway--you're not going to get Microsoft office or Adobe's Creative Suite from the app store.)

      I'm still sitting here wondering why this is blowing everyone's noodle. Apple's not making a JVM any more. Well, uh...that puts Macs in the same position as Linux and Windows. Microsoft doesn't make the JVM for Windows, after all.

      So now that OS X will be in the same position JVM-wise that Linux and Windows are, the earth-shaking problem is...what, again?

      1. Bod

        The Mac app store will not be the only place to get apps

        How long will this situation last I wonder? It doesn't take much for Steve to decide the next version of the OS will only run apps from the app store.

        And don't say it will never happen, because we know from Steve that he's prone to making these kinds of decisions.

      2. Werner Donné

        GUI

        The GUI integration.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Grenade

        The Mac app store will not be the only place to get apps.

        oh really? I'd like to see that written in stone by Steve Jobs.

        I suspect, very much, that the App store will be the ONLY way to get Apps in OSX 10.8

        (too much of a new twist int he guts of all Mac users to do it for 10.7 )

  15. Sean Baggaley 1
    WTF?

    I don't know what some of you are smoking...

    ... but it's clearly affecting your reading comprehension.

    Apple have decided not to bother maintaining their own-brand JVM. There are two possible outcomes:

    1. Oracle decide to take over the chore of maintaining Java support for OS X.

    They already do so for Windows and Linux, among many others, so why is this considered so unlikely? Because it's a little bit hard? Seriously?

    2. Oracle decide to throw their toys out of the pram and drop OS X support from Java.

    Quite why they'd do this, given Java's entire "run anywhere" ethos, escapes me, but hey! I'm not the one implying this in my own idiotic rants: *you* are!

    No matter what happens, it's a fair bet that the world will fail, quite spectacularly, to end.

    New technologies rise and fall all the time. New paradigms are invented, hyped, adopted, left to rot, then abandoned by the wayside. This is *normal*. It's "information Technology", for f*ck's sake. If you haven't spotted this blindingly obvious pattern by now, you're in the wrong trade.

    As for Java's "importance" in the enterprise and corporate sectors: why in the name of Codd do you expect Apple to give an unshat fig about those two sectors? That's like demanding a more business-friendly XBox360!

    Apple are only chasing *consumers*. You are not their target market. They do not care about your unusual needs. F*cking deal with it already, instead of whining like a spoiled child with entitlement issues.

    Get it now?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      All of which was true, but ...

      ... "to give an unshat fig", just totally cracked me up. Thankee.

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