Is Apple sidelining Java?

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danolner

in General Discussion • Other • 1 year ago

So, having sent some people a Java/processing app I made, it turns out since OSX Lion, Apple has applets turned off by default. There's some rigmarole you need to go through to enable it -

http://sniptools.com/mac-osx/making-java-work-in-browsers-on-mac-osx-lion

(Note the spotlight hint at the bottom.)

Also:

http://www.theipadguide.com/faq/does-ipad-support-java

Steve Jobs: "Java's not worth building in. Nobody uses Java anymore. It's this big heavyweight ball and chain."

No, no-one's using it - apart from every single Android user, just for starters.

It's deeply annoying having to ask mac users to switch something on before they can view sketches or applets at all.

So, any thoughts on what Apple is up to? Is the Lion decision of a piece with the iphone/ipad OS walled garden - are they deliberately cutting Java off as part of a strategy against Android?

And is Steve Jobs right to call it a "heavyweight ball and chain?" I love programming in Java (and using the Processing library A LOT), but should I be getting out of my coding bunker more?

Replies(2)

asimes

Re: Is Apple sidelining Java?

1 year ago

I am a mac user although I am using 10.6 (Snow Leopard). I had intentionally avoided "upgrading" because of a number of problems I have read about with Lion. On another forum I visit lately (Fractal Forums) I had heard that Lion basically destroyed the ability to build the scripts that they write (or at least made it require some intense terminal abilities to get around). I have experienced problems even with Snow Leopard that were not problems in Leopard with installing / building applications.

Obviously we can't prevent people from getting new versions of Apple products, but I also am very frustrated with this problem. I would imagine that you are right about the anti Java idea being a strategy against Android. Mac has already done this by not allowing Flash to work on iPhone or iPad against Adobe: http://hothardware.com/News/Adobe-Blames-Apple-For-Lack-Of-Flash-On-iPhone/

PhiLho

Re: Is Apple sidelining Java?

1 year ago

Note that Windows users must install Java before using it. That's a variant of " to switch something on before they can view sketches or applets", but at least they can use the standard Oracle Java distribution, not a custom one made, if they want it, by the OS maker.

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