5 ms·

That's actually a fairly decent reply; far better than 'nope' or 'you're holding it wrong'

fauigerzigerk 16y ago
Considering Java apps are banned from the Mac App Store, and there is currently no Oracle JDK for the Mac, I find it hard to call his comment decent. In the interest of not being inflamatory I refrain from calling it something else.
- andreyf 16y ago
  I've used Macs for years, and I haven't seen a Java app I didn't hate. They're UI is never native and the UX is much slower than good webapp's?
  - robin_reala 16y ago
    Cyberduck generally gets hauled up at this point as an example of a good Java OSX application: http://cyberduck.ch/ http://cyberduck.ch/
    - ryanwaggoner 16y ago
      Sorry, and maybe it's just me (somehow), but Cyberduck is slow. I'd been using it for years and had been putting up with the 10-second spinning beach ball every time I started it or tried to initiate a file transfer because I assumed that it was my old Macbook at fault. But earlier this year I bought a brand new MBP and the problem persisted, so I tried Transmit. Super fast, no issues. I won't be using Cyberduck again. Now that I know it's Java, I'm not surprised.
      - mgkimsal 16y ago
        I get beach balls all the time on pretty much everything I do on my mac - terminal, macvim, ical, itunes, mail, firefox, safari, chrome, pages, keynote, screenflow, eclipse, numbers, openoffice and more. They all get slow, lock up, freeze, etc. at some point or another, and it's almost always related to the fact that I'm multitasking. (true, yeah, i'm lame, and it's only a core 2 duo 2.1ghz with 2.5 gigs of RAM - I don't know why I expect to be able to run 3 programs at the same time).
        ryanwaggoner 16y ago
        I was really surprised at how much of a bump I got from a 1.8ghz Core 2 Duo with 2GB of memory to a 2.53ghz i5 with 4GB. My poor Macbook used to choke if I was running more than a handful of programs, or if I was running Flash with anything. Now I can run a bunch of fairly processor-intensive programs (video, VOIP, Flash games, browser with 2 dozen tabs, etc) simultaneously and it rarely chokes. Since I got such a big productivity gain from this change, I'm looking for other things I can do. I'll be due for an upgrade in another 4-6 months and I think I'll get an SSD.
        mgkimsal 16y ago
        What's so bizarre with this approach is that 2 years ago the specs on this were near 'top of line', and the software hasn't changed all that much over 2-3 years. I'm not saying it beach balls more now than 2 years ago - it's always been the same. I may do one more mac laptop - a higher end one next time - but I suspect my workstyle - doing multiple things all the time - is always going to end with beach balls, regardless of the mac. :/
        gaius 16y ago
        I'll bet you'll find whatever versions of Flash you've had have steadily required more and more CPU. I read the crash dumps when my Safari becomes unresponsive and I have to force quit it, and it's always Flash.
        stevenbedrick 16y ago
        I experienced something similar when I upgraded my semi-ancicent MacBook up to 4gb of RAM and a faster hard drive, which had amazing (positive) effects on its performance. I suspect that a lot of OSX's performance problems result from slow IO or limited RAM (leading to paging, and slow I/O again, etc.).
        count 16y ago
        Get an SSD. I never get beachballs, and those are my same specs. Disk I/O is about the only thing that chokes up on my MB now.
  - ubernostrum 16y ago
    I use exactly one Java application on OS X. And that's Minecraft.
    - eavc 16y ago
      To be fair, you haven't exactly be using many other applications of any kind since installing Minecraft, have you? ;)
  - fauigerzigerk 16y ago
    How does that make Mr. Jobs' comment more informative or honest? Anyway, I get what you're saying (even though I've seen many web apps that I hate as well). The question is simply whether the Mac is a software platform or a consumer appliance. If it's the latter, then I understand the idea of Apple curating every single piece of software that goes on those machines. Otherwise, the idea of banning everything you or Mr. Jobs don't like is inconsistent with the purpose of the product.
    - Kadrith 16y ago
      But why should Apple need to create Java on OSX? If Oracle wants Java used on OSX they can produce it just like on Windows; if they don't something else will fill the gap. He isn't banning anything. Nobody is saying that Java won't be allowed on OSX, just that there is no longer a need for Apple to maintain the development.
      - fauigerzigerk 16y ago
        Java apps are banned from the Mac App Store that was recently announced. It may become the main distribution channel for Mac applications, if not the only one.
  - dharmamike 16y ago
    Isn't the quality of UX less a problem of the platform and more a problem of the producing company not focusing on the experience their software should deliver? It's not as if it's impossible to create bad software for the Mac OS simply because it uses the native L&F.
  - greyboy 16y ago
    Oracle actually maintains it's own Java cross platform application that many of my coworkers use all day, every day (I use it periodically for some very handy features) - SQL Developer. It's actually quite responsive and usable considering. http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/sql-developer/downloads/index.html http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/sql-develo...
    - stuff4ben 16y ago
      I use it daily too on my Mac and its usability is pretty bad. Copy and paste sorta work, but I can never remember when to use cntl-c versus apple-c in this app. The UI is hideous and very un-Mac like. It also doesn't seem to handle network disconnects very well, oftentimes requiring a Force-Quit if I've switched from wired to wireless networking. That being said, I still use it because I haven't found anything else free that I like. I suppose if I use a tool every day like this one, I should pay to find one that works better.
      - greyboy 16y ago
        I'll concede, it isn't perfect and has quite a few quirks, which I can mostly avoid now. However, in my use case some features outweigh the inconveniences (i.e. exporting data). And it's free while all the alternatives I'm looked at aren't.
    - evilduck 16y ago
      Except [on Windows, where I use it] it eats about 600Mb of RAM just sitting there doing nothing with all connections closed. Start opening a bunch of tabs and DB connections and you can easily push it into the 1Gb RAM range and it crawls. Combo it with JDeveloper and a local instance of Weblogic, and you can pretty easily eat up 3Gb of RAM just opening up the standard set of Oracle dev tools.
      - glhaynes 16y ago
        It's absolutely astounding how long it takes to open, too. Woe to the person who clicks the SQL Developer icon, 20 seconds later still hasn't gotten any response indicating that the system "heard" the click, and then clicks again.
  - cosmicray 16y ago
    > I've used Macs for years, and I haven't seen a Java app I didn't hate. They're UI is never native and the UX is much slower than good webapp's? I have a java app that I wrote for my own use. It was written, using xcode, on G3 and G4 Macs. The day I moved to an Intel Mac, the app's performance improved dramatically. You can slap something together (with java) in a hurry and call it an application. Or you can take the time to look at it, refine your algorithms, and make it perform quite well. Some of the GUI issues, however, are a limitation. While I don't know what the real issues were, I would not be surprised if keeping the java interface elements, as close to the Mac GUI, was a contributory factor here. The Mac GUI is evolving quite quickly. Perhaps java could not keep it.
  - epochwolf 16y ago
    I use DB Viz at work all the time. That said, most of our JRuby stuff refuses to run on OSX. Some of the libraries we use are linux only.
  - slantyyz 16y ago
    I use DBVisualizer, and while the GUI leaves a little to be desired, I love that app because of the value in the functionality. I've heard Cyberduck uses Java as well. While I don't use that one any more, I've heard it's very popular. I could not even tell it was a Java app. edit -- turns out I use a lot of Java apps myself, more related to work, though: Pentaho Studio, SQL Power Architect, etc.
makumba4000 16y ago
He never said “you are holding it wrong.” Do your own research instead of spreading FUD.
- chaosmachine 16y ago
  For the record, the actual quote was "Just avoid holding it that way." http://news.yahoo.com/s/ytech_gadg/ytech_gadg_tc2844 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ytech_gadg/ytech_gadg_tc2844
- cubicle67 16y ago
  You're correct. Turns out I've been caught by one of those unknown unknowns where I didn't do any further research because I didn't know I didn't know something. It's too late for me to edit my original post, but thanks for pointing it out

Considering Java apps are banned from the Mac App Store, and there is currently no Oracle JDK for the Mac, I find it hard to call his comment decent. In the interest of not being inflamatory I refrain from calling it something else.

andreyf 16y ago
I've used Macs for years, and I haven't seen a Java app I didn't hate. They're UI is never native and the UX is much slower than good webapp's?
- robin_reala 16y ago
  Cyberduck generally gets hauled up at this point as an example of a good Java OSX application: http://cyberduck.ch/ http://cyberduck.ch/
  - ryanwaggoner 16y ago
    Sorry, and maybe it's just me (somehow), but Cyberduck is slow. I'd been using it for years and had been putting up with the 10-second spinning beach ball every time I started it or tried to initiate a file transfer because I assumed that it was my old Macbook at fault. But earlier this year I bought a brand new MBP and the problem persisted, so I tried Transmit. Super fast, no issues. I won't be using Cyberduck again. Now that I know it's Java, I'm not surprised.
    - mgkimsal 16y ago
      I get beach balls all the time on pretty much everything I do on my mac - terminal, macvim, ical, itunes, mail, firefox, safari, chrome, pages, keynote, screenflow, eclipse, numbers, openoffice and more. They all get slow, lock up, freeze, etc. at some point or another, and it's almost always related to the fact that I'm multitasking. (true, yeah, i'm lame, and it's only a core 2 duo 2.1ghz with 2.5 gigs of RAM - I don't know why I expect to be able to run 3 programs at the same time).
      - ryanwaggoner 16y ago
        I was really surprised at how much of a bump I got from a 1.8ghz Core 2 Duo with 2GB of memory to a 2.53ghz i5 with 4GB. My poor Macbook used to choke if I was running more than a handful of programs, or if I was running Flash with anything. Now I can run a bunch of fairly processor-intensive programs (video, VOIP, Flash games, browser with 2 dozen tabs, etc) simultaneously and it rarely chokes. Since I got such a big productivity gain from this change, I'm looking for other things I can do. I'll be due for an upgrade in another 4-6 months and I think I'll get an SSD.
        mgkimsal 16y ago
        What's so bizarre with this approach is that 2 years ago the specs on this were near 'top of line', and the software hasn't changed all that much over 2-3 years. I'm not saying it beach balls more now than 2 years ago - it's always been the same. I may do one more mac laptop - a higher end one next time - but I suspect my workstyle - doing multiple things all the time - is always going to end with beach balls, regardless of the mac. :/
        gaius 16y ago
        I'll bet you'll find whatever versions of Flash you've had have steadily required more and more CPU. I read the crash dumps when my Safari becomes unresponsive and I have to force quit it, and it's always Flash.
        stevenbedrick 16y ago
        I experienced something similar when I upgraded my semi-ancicent MacBook up to 4gb of RAM and a faster hard drive, which had amazing (positive) effects on its performance. I suspect that a lot of OSX's performance problems result from slow IO or limited RAM (leading to paging, and slow I/O again, etc.).
        count 16y ago
        Get an SSD. I never get beachballs, and those are my same specs. Disk I/O is about the only thing that chokes up on my MB now.
- ubernostrum 16y ago
  I use exactly one Java application on OS X. And that's Minecraft.
  - eavc 16y ago
    To be fair, you haven't exactly be using many other applications of any kind since installing Minecraft, have you? ;)
- fauigerzigerk 16y ago
  How does that make Mr. Jobs' comment more informative or honest? Anyway, I get what you're saying (even though I've seen many web apps that I hate as well). The question is simply whether the Mac is a software platform or a consumer appliance. If it's the latter, then I understand the idea of Apple curating every single piece of software that goes on those machines. Otherwise, the idea of banning everything you or Mr. Jobs don't like is inconsistent with the purpose of the product.
  - Kadrith 16y ago
    But why should Apple need to create Java on OSX? If Oracle wants Java used on OSX they can produce it just like on Windows; if they don't something else will fill the gap. He isn't banning anything. Nobody is saying that Java won't be allowed on OSX, just that there is no longer a need for Apple to maintain the development.
    - fauigerzigerk 16y ago
      Java apps are banned from the Mac App Store that was recently announced. It may become the main distribution channel for Mac applications, if not the only one.
- dharmamike 16y ago
  Isn't the quality of UX less a problem of the platform and more a problem of the producing company not focusing on the experience their software should deliver? It's not as if it's impossible to create bad software for the Mac OS simply because it uses the native L&F.
- greyboy 16y ago
  Oracle actually maintains it's own Java cross platform application that many of my coworkers use all day, every day (I use it periodically for some very handy features) - SQL Developer. It's actually quite responsive and usable considering. http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/sql-developer/downloads/index.html http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/sql-develo...
  - stuff4ben 16y ago
    I use it daily too on my Mac and its usability is pretty bad. Copy and paste sorta work, but I can never remember when to use cntl-c versus apple-c in this app. The UI is hideous and very un-Mac like. It also doesn't seem to handle network disconnects very well, oftentimes requiring a Force-Quit if I've switched from wired to wireless networking. That being said, I still use it because I haven't found anything else free that I like. I suppose if I use a tool every day like this one, I should pay to find one that works better.
    - greyboy 16y ago
      I'll concede, it isn't perfect and has quite a few quirks, which I can mostly avoid now. However, in my use case some features outweigh the inconveniences (i.e. exporting data). And it's free while all the alternatives I'm looked at aren't.
  - evilduck 16y ago
    Except [on Windows, where I use it] it eats about 600Mb of RAM just sitting there doing nothing with all connections closed. Start opening a bunch of tabs and DB connections and you can easily push it into the 1Gb RAM range and it crawls. Combo it with JDeveloper and a local instance of Weblogic, and you can pretty easily eat up 3Gb of RAM just opening up the standard set of Oracle dev tools.
    - glhaynes 16y ago
      It's absolutely astounding how long it takes to open, too. Woe to the person who clicks the SQL Developer icon, 20 seconds later still hasn't gotten any response indicating that the system "heard" the click, and then clicks again.
- cosmicray 16y ago
  > I've used Macs for years, and I haven't seen a Java app I didn't hate. They're UI is never native and the UX is much slower than good webapp's? I have a java app that I wrote for my own use. It was written, using xcode, on G3 and G4 Macs. The day I moved to an Intel Mac, the app's performance improved dramatically. You can slap something together (with java) in a hurry and call it an application. Or you can take the time to look at it, refine your algorithms, and make it perform quite well. Some of the GUI issues, however, are a limitation. While I don't know what the real issues were, I would not be surprised if keeping the java interface elements, as close to the Mac GUI, was a contributory factor here. The Mac GUI is evolving quite quickly. Perhaps java could not keep it.
- epochwolf 16y ago
  I use DB Viz at work all the time. That said, most of our JRuby stuff refuses to run on OSX. Some of the libraries we use are linux only.
- slantyyz 16y ago
  I use DBVisualizer, and while the GUI leaves a little to be desired, I love that app because of the value in the functionality. I've heard Cyberduck uses Java as well. While I don't use that one any more, I've heard it's very popular. I could not even tell it was a Java app. edit -- turns out I use a lot of Java apps myself, more related to work, though: Pentaho Studio, SQL Power Architect, etc.

makumba4000 16y ago

He never said “you are holding it wrong.” Do your own research instead of spreading FUD.

chaosmachine 16y ago
For the record, the actual quote was "Just avoid holding it that way." http://news.yahoo.com/s/ytech_gadg/ytech_gadg_tc2844 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ytech_gadg/ytech_gadg_tc2844
cubicle67 16y ago
You're correct. Turns out I've been caught by one of those unknown unknowns where I didn't do any further research because I didn't know I didn't know something. It's too late for me to edit my original post, but thanks for pointing it out