5 ms·

I wonder if putting the boot into the most straightforward cross-platform solution for desktop apps has anything to do with the proliferation of OSX Java apps w

by msy 16y ago

I wonder if putting the boot into the most straightforward cross-platform solution for desktop apps has anything to do with the proliferation of OSX Java apps with shoddy/un-maclike UX/UI or whether it's something to do with Oracle's recent moves.

yakisoft 16y ago
I don't think Oracle is even on Apples radar, Apple is largely a consumer/creator focussed business, Oracle is purely B2B.
- riffraff 16y ago
  yet, some java developers are mac users, losing them does not seem smart
riffraff 16y ago
is there such a proliferation? the only java app I use on the mac is cyberduck, and it is neither shoddy nor un-maclike
- hboon 16y ago
  Had no idea Cyberduck is written in Java. If only all Java desktop applications are like this.
  - albertzeyer 16y ago
    Oh, me neither! I really had to check this out. The main point seems to be: They don't use any of the Java GUI frameworks. They instead use some Cocoa bindings. See here: http://trac.cyberduck.ch/browser/trunk/source/ch/cyberduck/ui/cocoa http://trac.cyberduck.ch/browser/trunk/source/ch/cyberduck/u...
  - rimantas 16y ago
    I use SmartSVN, wouldn't call it ugly.
    - albertzeyer 16y ago
      But this seems to be AWT. And the GUI just doesn't feel as snappy as native Cocoa. Actually, I wonder why that is. I always thought that it is Java itself which makes Java applications feel slow. But I haven't noticed this in Cyberduck. So maybe it is just AWT. I wonder why that might be. Maybe because AWT does all the drawing itself, which is much slower compared to the native toolkit?
      - riffraff 16y ago
        many SWT apps, using native look and feel, still feel slowish (think azureus/vuze if not eclipse). Some AWT apps are perfectly snappy e.g. jedit opens a file faster than macvim on my box. My belief is that apart form some overhead in AWT against native toolkit, 90% of the laggish experience in java apps is due to poor coding. In turn, this is probably a byproduct of the java platform/language (abuse threads cause they are easier than an event loop, abuse locking cause synchronized is more obvious than util.concurrent, avoid thinking of memory management cause you have a GC, do not pay attention to proper data structures cause you can get away with builtin collections etc)
        stcredzero 16y ago
        do not pay attention to proper data structures cause you can get away with builtin collections etc Specific examples from your experience?
        riffraff 16y ago
        code I wrote myself :) First one I think of (cause I redid it today, in ruby :) is: you need to keep a list of lines you already processed in a large log analysis. I'd just use a Set (which is a hash underneath) and get done, although I'd have saved a bunch of overhead (memory allocations, gc pressure) using a bloom filter.
thought_alarm 16y ago
I think it just means that Apple has no interest in bringing Java 7 to OS X. It certainly took them a long time to release Java 6. Funny thing is, one of my favorite Mac apps was/is written in Java: Cyberduck FTP client. Cyberduck is an open source app originally written using the Java/Cocoa bridge, then using some hybrid of Cocoa and Java. But the thing is, the end user has absolutely no idea that it's a Java application. The only reason I know it's written in Java is because I looked at their source code to see how they implemented Quick Look (before it was a public API), and boom, the damn thing's in Java! As a longtime hater of Java desktop apps, I was flabbergasted. As far as I'm concerned, OS X was the only desktop platform where Java had any sort of chance for user acceptance, but it never caught on with developers. As such, Java has been effectively dead as an option for desktop development since OS X Leopard.
- meelash 16y ago
  Really, that's very surprising. I'm a longtime Cyberduck user and had no idea...
  - micheljansen 16y ago
    I am both surprised and delighted.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
micheljansen 16y ago
It seems like more than a coincidence to me that this announcement is made right after Oracle absorbed Sun and made some pretty shocking announcements about their plans with Sun's open source portfolio (OpenSolaris, MySQL) and Java.
rryyan 16y ago
Jobs and Ellison are buddies -- I would find it surprising if Oracle went after Apple over some Java legal issue. My bet is on shoddy UI, plus the time invested vs. payoff balance.
- WaltFrench 16y ago
  I have found this thread blissfully flamewar free regards business motivations. That said, I think this first mention of business issues is both overdue and needing expansion. How can one look at the deprecation of a particular runtime in isolation from (a) Apple's simultaneous announcement of increasing commonality of iOS and OSX, and (b) Oracle's aggressive enforcement of comm-related java libraries? Since Apple sells and approves all app-store products, they bear plausible liability for an iOS app, if Oracle was lawsuit-minded. I would hardly be surprised to learn that Oracle will NOT sue Apple over runtimes that could trip up Google, thanks to Apple's agreement to remove possibly-offending code. Or, alternatively, if you have an iOS app that wants to do comm in java, how could Apple field an alternative library to one that Oracle claims is theirs? This makes Apple-supplied java runtimes a dead end. We'll see how interested Oracle is in licensing alternatives.
  - pvaibhav 16y ago
    > I would hardly be surprised to learn that Oracle will NOT sue Apple over runtimes that could trip up Google I think the difference is that Apple licenses/d Java and bundles a standard VM and framework, while Google did not do so - they just used the language with their own VM and framework distinctly different from, say, J2ME.
- BenSS 16y ago
  I think it's more that now Ellison owns Java/Sun, he wants control. Jobs was happy to hand over the resource-suck since he sees the future as iOS apps and appstore anyway.

by msy 16y ago

yakisoft 16y ago

I don't think Oracle is even on Apples radar, Apple is largely a consumer/creator focussed business, Oracle is purely B2B.

riffraff 16y ago
yet, some java developers are mac users, losing them does not seem smart

riffraff 16y ago

is there such a proliferation? the only java app I use on the mac is cyberduck, and it is neither shoddy nor un-maclike

hboon 16y ago
Had no idea Cyberduck is written in Java. If only all Java desktop applications are like this.
- albertzeyer 16y ago
  Oh, me neither! I really had to check this out. The main point seems to be: They don't use any of the Java GUI frameworks. They instead use some Cocoa bindings. See here: http://trac.cyberduck.ch/browser/trunk/source/ch/cyberduck/ui/cocoa http://trac.cyberduck.ch/browser/trunk/source/ch/cyberduck/u...
- rimantas 16y ago
  I use SmartSVN, wouldn't call it ugly.
  - albertzeyer 16y ago
    But this seems to be AWT. And the GUI just doesn't feel as snappy as native Cocoa. Actually, I wonder why that is. I always thought that it is Java itself which makes Java applications feel slow. But I haven't noticed this in Cyberduck. So maybe it is just AWT. I wonder why that might be. Maybe because AWT does all the drawing itself, which is much slower compared to the native toolkit?
    - riffraff 16y ago
      many SWT apps, using native look and feel, still feel slowish (think azureus/vuze if not eclipse). Some AWT apps are perfectly snappy e.g. jedit opens a file faster than macvim on my box. My belief is that apart form some overhead in AWT against native toolkit, 90% of the laggish experience in java apps is due to poor coding. In turn, this is probably a byproduct of the java platform/language (abuse threads cause they are easier than an event loop, abuse locking cause synchronized is more obvious than util.concurrent, avoid thinking of memory management cause you have a GC, do not pay attention to proper data structures cause you can get away with builtin collections etc)
      - stcredzero 16y ago
        do not pay attention to proper data structures cause you can get away with builtin collections etc Specific examples from your experience?
        riffraff 16y ago
        code I wrote myself :) First one I think of (cause I redid it today, in ruby :) is: you need to keep a list of lines you already processed in a large log analysis. I'd just use a Set (which is a hash underneath) and get done, although I'd have saved a bunch of overhead (memory allocations, gc pressure) using a bloom filter.

thought_alarm 16y ago

I think it just means that Apple has no interest in bringing Java 7 to OS X. It certainly took them a long time to release Java 6. Funny thing is, one of my favorite Mac apps was/is written in Java: Cyberduck FTP client. Cyberduck is an open source app originally written using the Java/Cocoa bridge, then using some hybrid of Cocoa and Java. But the thing is, the end user has absolutely no idea that it's a Java application. The only reason I know it's written in Java is because I looked at their source code to see how they implemented Quick Look (before it was a public API), and boom, the damn thing's in Java! As a longtime hater of Java desktop apps, I was flabbergasted. As far as I'm concerned, OS X was the only desktop platform where Java had any sort of chance for user acceptance, but it never caught on with developers. As such, Java has been effectively dead as an option for desktop development since OS X Leopard.

meelash 16y ago
Really, that's very surprising. I'm a longtime Cyberduck user and had no idea...
- micheljansen 16y ago
  I am both surprised and delighted.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

micheljansen 16y ago

It seems like more than a coincidence to me that this announcement is made right after Oracle absorbed Sun and made some pretty shocking announcements about their plans with Sun's open source portfolio (OpenSolaris, MySQL) and Java.

rryyan 16y ago

Jobs and Ellison are buddies -- I would find it surprising if Oracle went after Apple over some Java legal issue. My bet is on shoddy UI, plus the time invested vs. payoff balance.

WaltFrench 16y ago
I have found this thread blissfully flamewar free regards business motivations. That said, I think this first mention of business issues is both overdue and needing expansion. How can one look at the deprecation of a particular runtime in isolation from (a) Apple's simultaneous announcement of increasing commonality of iOS and OSX, and (b) Oracle's aggressive enforcement of comm-related java libraries? Since Apple sells and approves all app-store products, they bear plausible liability for an iOS app, if Oracle was lawsuit-minded. I would hardly be surprised to learn that Oracle will NOT sue Apple over runtimes that could trip up Google, thanks to Apple's agreement to remove possibly-offending code. Or, alternatively, if you have an iOS app that wants to do comm in java, how could Apple field an alternative library to one that Oracle claims is theirs? This makes Apple-supplied java runtimes a dead end. We'll see how interested Oracle is in licensing alternatives.
- pvaibhav 16y ago
  > I would hardly be surprised to learn that Oracle will NOT sue Apple over runtimes that could trip up Google I think the difference is that Apple licenses/d Java and bundles a standard VM and framework, while Google did not do so - they just used the language with their own VM and framework distinctly different from, say, J2ME.
BenSS 16y ago
I think it's more that now Ellison owns Java/Sun, he wants control. Jobs was happy to hand over the resource-suck since he sees the future as iOS apps and appstore anyway.