No Java on the iPhone?

[Unnsse Khan]

Check out the article here.

Scares me when I read this... Makes think that they might drop Java from OS X.

Well, it does seem predictable considering the fact that there's no MIDP 2.0 support on OS X.

Cheers,

[marc weber]

Hmmm... That is disappointing, if not a bit alarming. To add some context, Jobs (reportedly) elaborated by saying, "We define everything that is on the phone... These are more like iPods than they are like computers." But I'm not sure what to make of that.

[Bear Bibeault]

I took that to mean client-side (applets) Java.

[Unnsse Khan]

James Duncan Davidson (inventor of Tomcat and Ant) is an author of lots of great OS X books...

This is what his response was on his blog regarding no Java on iPhone:

http://blog.duncandavidson.com/2007/01/what_does_no_ja.html
[ January 22, 2007: Message edited by: Unnsse Khan ]

[marc weber]

Since Jobs was speaking about the iPhone, I can only hope he meant nobody uses Java anymore in web apps or the small handful of apps Apple plans to be releasing for the iPhone. In a broader or long-term context, his comments are worrisome. And Davidson seems to make some good points.

I still don't know what to make of this.

[Bear Bibeault]

Originally posted by marc weber:
nobody uses Java anymore in web apps

Again, I'll assume you mean client applets. Server-side Java is going strong!

[marc weber]

Originally posted by Bear Bibeault:
...Again, I'll assume you mean client applets. Server-side Java is going strong!

Absolutely! I should not have said "web apps." I only meant client applets.

[Unnsse Khan]

James Duncan Davidson wrote a follow-up to his blog posting entitled More On Java and the Mac.

He also follow-up with a third posting called IPhone, Java, and Flash.

Enjoy!
[ January 22, 2007: Message edited by: Unnsse Khan ]

[marc weber]

On the other hand...

I have my Java console set to display whenever an applet runs in Safari, and it shows up a lot when I'm browsing. (I don't remember why I turned this on in the first place.) I never gave it much thought until now, but maybe applets are being used a lot more than we think. Most of these are probably ancient, but legacy code dies hard. Does anyone really know applets' prominence on the web?

In any case, while Apple is finally overcoming a general perception of most things not being able to run on Macs, I think it would be a mistake to start excluding features.

[Ulf Dittmer]

I don't understand what all the hoopla is about. The iPhone is not a Mac (even though it may run some pared-down version of OS X), it's a cell phone and iPod. Saying that it won't run Java is like saying that a cell phone won't support J2ME - not at all a big deal in my book. Nobody is talking about removing client-side Java from OS X. What am I missing?

[marc weber]

Originally posted by Ulf Dittmer:
... Nobody is talking about removing client-side Java from OS X. What am I missing?

Well, that seems to be what Duncan Davidson implies in the article referenced above, "What does No Java on the iPhone Mean?"

The message [from Apple] in 2007 seems to be that server side Java is OK. But on the desktop, eeeeh, not so much.

...

All of the great and compelling desktop applications for the Mac are written in C, Objective-C, and C++ using several different frameworks. Every. Single. One.

Damn, that stings a bit, doesn't it? If I were an executive at Apple and over the last 10 years I haven't really seen a compelling end product come out of all that work on Java, not to mention haggling with Sun over licensing terms the whole time, I'd be casting a skeptical eye as well.

Consider that the iPhone is being marketed as more than just a cell phone and iPod. As Apple puts it...

iPhone combines three products � a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching...

I think it's the last of these three "products" that's being interpreted as a bellwether of Apple's intent. Is too much being read in to the first incarnation of a small mobile device? Is this just overblown speculation and paranoia? Probably. I don't know.

[Ulf Dittmer]

The message [from Apple] in 2007 seems to be that server side Java is OK. But on the desktop, eeeeh, not so much.

Well, he doesn't really back that up with anything. Applets and Web Start work fine. The Aqua L&F looks good, and you can do quite a few things to make Swing apps look and behave more like native code (more than on Windows, anyway). So I'm in the "this is way overblown" camp.

[Unnsse Khan]

Marc, Bear, and Ulf:

James does have a point though... To a lot of Java programmers, Swing is perceived as difficult and tedious. A lot of Java developers seem to be more well versed in servlets, JSP, and JDBC, than everything else.

I've been coding in Swing at my current job and must say that its been a real treat and pleasure to use! There is a different learning curve, of course, because web based UI differs than desktop UI development in a lot of different ways.

On another note, I did hear that Flex is one of the *BEST* UI frameworks and is a lot more effective when dealing with cross-browser compatability issues.

I just think that what James is trying to convey is stemming from the overall majority of Java developers: Swing sucks! But my argument is that most do not choose to learn it because there's not that many jobs using it over JSP.

Just my two cents,
[ January 28, 2007: Message edited by: Unnsse Khan ]

[Ulf Dittmer]

James does have a point though... To a lot of Java programmers, Swing is perceived as difficult and tedious. A lot of Java developers seem to be more well versed in servlets, JSP, and JDBC, than everything else.

He's right that Java on the desktop is not doing well. But that's a different subject than the dicsussion of whether desktop Java is doing well on Mac OS X compared to other operating systems.

As a loosely related aside, Java desktop integration just got a lot better with Java 6. I'm looking forward to playing around with that once Apple releases it. That's of course a sore point, that Apple is continuously behind with releases, but I'm over my got-to-have-the-latest-and-greatest-software-version-right-away period, so I can live with that.
[ January 28, 2007: Message edited by: Ulf Dittmer ]