7 ms·

My guess is that there is some sort of Oracle licensing agreement that prevents Apple from distributing Java with the release. You'd think that these two massiv

by st3fan 15y ago

My guess is that there is some sort of Oracle licensing agreement that prevents Apple from distributing Java with the release. You'd think that these two massive public companies would be able to work something out This is pure unfounded speculation. In reality Apple probably wanted to make the Lion base install leaner. Many components are are now simply loaded and installed on demand. Like for example also extra voices for text2speech.

runjake 15y ago
Stuff like this needs to be called out. These days, some blogger speculates on a reason for something and every technology news site is reporting it as fact.
- drgath 15y ago
  Agreed. This was announced 8 months ago and widely covered by the tech media. It's just irresponsible reporting if people are covering this story and don't know the reasons why. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/21/apple_threatens_to_kill_java_on_the_mac/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/21/apple_threatens_to_k...
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- bad_user 15y ago
  Yes, I think it matters -- some extra megs here, some extra bandwidth there, some ugliness that few people notice -- and pretty soon you end up with Adobe Acrobat. There's a reason people felt in love with everything Apple does: they took attention to details at heights nobody in this industry did. But I also think a couple hundred megs of data is not the only reason -- but more to do with wanting to cut dependencies to other companies (Apple does that frequently). Once upon a time Java was one of the preferred methods for writing Mac OS apps: Apple clearly doesn't want that anymore.
  - latchkey 15y ago
    So then why not remove ruby and distribute that separately? How about the multi-gig translation language packs that I'll never use?
    - ugh 15y ago
      I think Apple should seriously consider looking into removing other obscure things as well. Their process of downloading optional stuff is very slick and painless. After launching Minecraft (which needs Java) I had to confirm one dialog box. Java downloaded, installed and Minecraft launched. No user interaction required, it was completely painless. I’m not sure why you are so hung up on Java. It’s certainly obscure enough to make it optional. Languages could certainly also be removed but OS X always had this philosophy of shipping every app and every OS with every language. There are no language versions of apps and Apple doesn’t like them.
    - econgeeker 15y ago
      You may not use them, but not everyone speaks english. Plus, I suspect that those were one of the things that got removed and that get pulled down at install time if needed.
  - cube13 15y ago
    >Once upon a time Java was one of the preferred methods for writing Mac OS apps: Apple clearly doesn't want that anymore. Apple just doesn't see enough benefit in continuing their own JVM development. The primary reason that Java was the preferred method was purely because of the portable nature of Java code, and the fact that Mac OS9 and OSX didn't really have enough marketshare to make full ports feasible. Since OSX has a fairly decent marketshare at this point, it's an easier argument to make a native port over multiplatform, portable code like Java. One of the issues with Java on OSX was that, most of the time, you couldn't actually code to the latest version of Java, because Apple was months(or even years) behind on implementing new JVM and Java language specs. It took Apple about a year and a half to update their JVM to 1.6 after that was released. Here's a timeline for Apple's historical Java releases: http://stuffthathappens.com/blog/2007/10/28/os-x-java-definitive-timeline/ http://stuffthathappens.com/blog/2007/10/28/os-x-java-defini... Java 6 support was released in May, 2008: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1856 http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1856 Given that history, and the fact that iOS is primarily objective C, it's really no surprise that Apple decided to depreciate the JVM from their OS.
- wmf 15y ago
  It matters on the 64 GB Air. Between compression and removing components, OS X has gotten a lot smaller.
- ugh 15y ago
  They certainly do – probably not for Apple but certainly for consumers. Apple currently only distributes Lion digitally. You can get it on a thumb drive in two months or so but it will cost you more than twice as much as the download. Apple wants consumers to download Lion. 3.7 GB (that’s the size of the download) are still a lot and keeping the size of downloads as small as possible is certainly a valid goal. I think Apple shaved off about one GB or so compared to what they pressed on DVDs and that’s certainly noticeable for many people. My parents’ house (in Germany) has this really awful DSL connection, more than 4,000 kbit/s are just not possible. Having to download 1 GB less would save them over thirty minutes. (Downloading merely 3.7 GB would take them over two hours.) Making stuff only few people use optional is still a great idea when you want people to download it. Not everyone has FIOS.
  - jrockway 15y ago
    Heh, 4M is considered a "really awful" internet connection these days? I have 6M and am perfectly happy. Then again, an apt-get upgrade once a week is a lot more efficient than a 4G monolith every year :)
    - richbradshaw 15y ago
      If we are talking about 4Mb/s, then yes, that's at least half of the slowest speeds you'd expect nowadays. The cheapest package my ISP offers is 10Mb/s, with the average priced one being 30Mb/s.
      - jrockway 15y ago
        But that's cable, right? DSL is different; 15Mbps seems to be the high end of DSL connectivity. But, unlike with cable, you are not sharing that bandwidth with everyone else on your block: it's all yours. Hence, it's advantageous on occasion.
    - ugh 15y ago
      My parents’ problem is more that those 4M are the limit for the house, their DSL line just isn’t any faster. The connection also seems somewhat flaky (this might be an illusion, though). My parents must be really far away from the next DSLAM, close to the limit of what’s possible. It’s certainly noticeable, there are really annoying slowdowns when someone watches a YouTube video and someone else tries to browse the web. The problem is probably that in my parents’ house the internet connection is often used by more than one person. When I’m downloading something I can sort of deal with a video that takes longer to load, but when someone else causes my video to take longer to load, well that’s annoying. Maybe they should switch to cable.
- Someone 15y ago
  Bandwidth is not the only consideration. Apple sells MacBook air's with a single 64GB 'disk'. On such a system, users will notice a difference if you manage to save 'a couple hundred megs' a few times.
  - colincsl 15y ago
    Quick note: they do not sell 64Gb MBAs anymore. I don't think they have since last year.
    - reitzensteinm 15y ago
      Uh, yes they do. The options are 64/128 for the 11", and 128/256 for the 13".
    - wmf 15y ago
      Even if that were true, the price of Apple's early adoption is that they have to support it for four years. (Just like they supported 32-bit x86 for years even though they only used it for a short time.)
silvestrov 15y ago
Mike Swingler (Apple JVM developer) said: http://lists.apple.com/archives/java-dev/2011/Jul/msg00041.html http://lists.apple.com/archives/java-dev/2011/Jul/msg00041.h... After a decade of shipping Java on the Mac and tricking old apps that hardcode paths to the 1.3.1 JVM, or putting in class loader hacks to fake out Xerces XML classes that were moved in 1.5.0, we are ready to try something different. In http://lists.apple.com/archives/java-dev/2011/Jul/msg00044.html http://lists.apple.com/archives/java-dev/2011/Jul/msg00044.h... What you loose in a per-app embedded model is shared memory mapping of the native libraries and .jar files, but this is the same problem as a half dozen apps embedding (often different) versions of the Sparkle.framework to do app self-updates. The cost of the JVM heap is still the same, and class-sharing was never ported to 64-bit by Sun, so that optimization hasn't been around for a long time on Macs. In http://lists.apple.com/archives/java-dev/2011/Jul/msg00038.html http://lists.apple.com/archives/java-dev/2011/Jul/msg00038.h... Long-term, we recommend that app developers who use the JavaApplicationStub should transition to embedding the Java runtime within their own app. We are working with Oracle on the OpenJDK project to provide an open source version of JDK7 that can be embedded, and several developers have already started deploying their apps with an embedded JDK7 (but it requires many manual steps right now). We are tracking the progress of creating an embeddable JRE in http://java.net/jira/browse/MACOSX_PORT-105 http://java.net/jira/browse/MACOSX_PORT-105 Conclusion: Apple's JVM team think this model is better for solving end users problem with JVM compatibility.
- andos 15y ago
  The suggested "bring your own" model of software deployment solves a lot of support problems, too.
  - ROFISH 15y ago
    Yes, but "bring your own" solves a lot of Apple's support problems related to sole exclusivity on old and insecure JVMs.
- dave1010uk 15y ago
  Does this mean all Java software that's distributed in this new way has to be compatible with OpenDK's license?
DrJokepu 15y ago
It's also a known fact that the CEOs of these two companies are very close friends; it's unthinkable that they couldn't sort out an issue like that.
viraptor 15y ago
I like how you put those 2 sentences together: > This is pure unfounded speculation. > In reality Apple probably wanted to make the Lion base install leaner. Can't agree more - pure speculation.
- bascule 15y ago
  Apple's "leaner install base" for Lion seems to ship with Oracle's VisualVM tool, which won't work until you install Java
- st3fan 15y ago
  The thing that annoys me is that people always thing the worst when something happens in Apple land. Most of the times things happen because they simply make sense.
  - fauigerzigerk 15y ago
    That's absolutely right. The problem is just that not everything that makes sense for Apple's bottom line makes sense for mine. For instance, deleting everything from my iPod without warning probably made sense for Apple's copyright negatiations with media companies. It didn't make much sense to me. Censoring dictonaries and banning everything sexual, satirical, political or otherwise "unclean" from the app store probably makes sense for Apple. Makes no sense to me. So, I guess, the issue I have with the phrase "making sense" is that it obfiuscates the fact that everyone has their own vested interests and the vested interests of a particular large corporation are sometimes very different from mine.
    - sedev 15y ago
      "the vested interests of a particular large corporation are sometimes very different from mine." Couldn't agree more! Especially when it comes to large corporations where you are a product being sold to advertisers, they're even worse than large corporations that accept money from you in return for goods and services.
      - 15y ago

by st3fan 15y ago

runjake 15y ago

Stuff like this needs to be called out. These days, some blogger speculates on a reason for something and every technology news site is reporting it as fact.

drgath 15y ago
Agreed. This was announced 8 months ago and widely covered by the tech media. It's just irresponsible reporting if people are covering this story and don't know the reasons why. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/21/apple_threatens_to_kill_java_on_the_mac/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/21/apple_threatens_to_k...

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

bad_user 15y ago
Yes, I think it matters -- some extra megs here, some extra bandwidth there, some ugliness that few people notice -- and pretty soon you end up with Adobe Acrobat. There's a reason people felt in love with everything Apple does: they took attention to details at heights nobody in this industry did. But I also think a couple hundred megs of data is not the only reason -- but more to do with wanting to cut dependencies to other companies (Apple does that frequently). Once upon a time Java was one of the preferred methods for writing Mac OS apps: Apple clearly doesn't want that anymore.
- latchkey 15y ago
  So then why not remove ruby and distribute that separately? How about the multi-gig translation language packs that I'll never use?
  - ugh 15y ago
    I think Apple should seriously consider looking into removing other obscure things as well. Their process of downloading optional stuff is very slick and painless. After launching Minecraft (which needs Java) I had to confirm one dialog box. Java downloaded, installed and Minecraft launched. No user interaction required, it was completely painless. I’m not sure why you are so hung up on Java. It’s certainly obscure enough to make it optional. Languages could certainly also be removed but OS X always had this philosophy of shipping every app and every OS with every language. There are no language versions of apps and Apple doesn’t like them.
  - econgeeker 15y ago
    You may not use them, but not everyone speaks english. Plus, I suspect that those were one of the things that got removed and that get pulled down at install time if needed.
- cube13 15y ago
  >Once upon a time Java was one of the preferred methods for writing Mac OS apps: Apple clearly doesn't want that anymore. Apple just doesn't see enough benefit in continuing their own JVM development. The primary reason that Java was the preferred method was purely because of the portable nature of Java code, and the fact that Mac OS9 and OSX didn't really have enough marketshare to make full ports feasible. Since OSX has a fairly decent marketshare at this point, it's an easier argument to make a native port over multiplatform, portable code like Java. One of the issues with Java on OSX was that, most of the time, you couldn't actually code to the latest version of Java, because Apple was months(or even years) behind on implementing new JVM and Java language specs. It took Apple about a year and a half to update their JVM to 1.6 after that was released. Here's a timeline for Apple's historical Java releases: http://stuffthathappens.com/blog/2007/10/28/os-x-java-definitive-timeline/ http://stuffthathappens.com/blog/2007/10/28/os-x-java-defini... Java 6 support was released in May, 2008: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1856 http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1856 Given that history, and the fact that iOS is primarily objective C, it's really no surprise that Apple decided to depreciate the JVM from their OS.
wmf 15y ago
It matters on the 64 GB Air. Between compression and removing components, OS X has gotten a lot smaller.
ugh 15y ago
They certainly do – probably not for Apple but certainly for consumers. Apple currently only distributes Lion digitally. You can get it on a thumb drive in two months or so but it will cost you more than twice as much as the download. Apple wants consumers to download Lion. 3.7 GB (that’s the size of the download) are still a lot and keeping the size of downloads as small as possible is certainly a valid goal. I think Apple shaved off about one GB or so compared to what they pressed on DVDs and that’s certainly noticeable for many people. My parents’ house (in Germany) has this really awful DSL connection, more than 4,000 kbit/s are just not possible. Having to download 1 GB less would save them over thirty minutes. (Downloading merely 3.7 GB would take them over two hours.) Making stuff only few people use optional is still a great idea when you want people to download it. Not everyone has FIOS.
- jrockway 15y ago
  Heh, 4M is considered a "really awful" internet connection these days? I have 6M and am perfectly happy. Then again, an apt-get upgrade once a week is a lot more efficient than a 4G monolith every year :)
  - richbradshaw 15y ago
    If we are talking about 4Mb/s, then yes, that's at least half of the slowest speeds you'd expect nowadays. The cheapest package my ISP offers is 10Mb/s, with the average priced one being 30Mb/s.
    - jrockway 15y ago
      But that's cable, right? DSL is different; 15Mbps seems to be the high end of DSL connectivity. But, unlike with cable, you are not sharing that bandwidth with everyone else on your block: it's all yours. Hence, it's advantageous on occasion.
  - ugh 15y ago
    My parents’ problem is more that those 4M are the limit for the house, their DSL line just isn’t any faster. The connection also seems somewhat flaky (this might be an illusion, though). My parents must be really far away from the next DSLAM, close to the limit of what’s possible. It’s certainly noticeable, there are really annoying slowdowns when someone watches a YouTube video and someone else tries to browse the web. The problem is probably that in my parents’ house the internet connection is often used by more than one person. When I’m downloading something I can sort of deal with a video that takes longer to load, but when someone else causes my video to take longer to load, well that’s annoying. Maybe they should switch to cable.
Someone 15y ago
Bandwidth is not the only consideration. Apple sells MacBook air's with a single 64GB 'disk'. On such a system, users will notice a difference if you manage to save 'a couple hundred megs' a few times.
- colincsl 15y ago
  Quick note: they do not sell 64Gb MBAs anymore. I don't think they have since last year.
  - reitzensteinm 15y ago
    Uh, yes they do. The options are 64/128 for the 11", and 128/256 for the 13".
  - wmf 15y ago
    Even if that were true, the price of Apple's early adoption is that they have to support it for four years. (Just like they supported 32-bit x86 for years even though they only used it for a short time.)

silvestrov 15y ago

Mike Swingler (Apple JVM developer) said: http://lists.apple.com/archives/java-dev/2011/Jul/msg00041.html http://lists.apple.com/archives/java-dev/2011/Jul/msg00041.h... After a decade of shipping Java on the Mac and tricking old apps that hardcode paths to the 1.3.1 JVM, or putting in class loader hacks to fake out Xerces XML classes that were moved in 1.5.0, we are ready to try something different. In http://lists.apple.com/archives/java-dev/2011/Jul/msg00044.html http://lists.apple.com/archives/java-dev/2011/Jul/msg00044.h... What you loose in a per-app embedded model is shared memory mapping of the native libraries and .jar files, but this is the same problem as a half dozen apps embedding (often different) versions of the Sparkle.framework to do app self-updates. The cost of the JVM heap is still the same, and class-sharing was never ported to 64-bit by Sun, so that optimization hasn't been around for a long time on Macs. In http://lists.apple.com/archives/java-dev/2011/Jul/msg00038.html http://lists.apple.com/archives/java-dev/2011/Jul/msg00038.h... Long-term, we recommend that app developers who use the JavaApplicationStub should transition to embedding the Java runtime within their own app. We are working with Oracle on the OpenJDK project to provide an open source version of JDK7 that can be embedded, and several developers have already started deploying their apps with an embedded JDK7 (but it requires many manual steps right now). We are tracking the progress of creating an embeddable JRE in http://java.net/jira/browse/MACOSX_PORT-105 http://java.net/jira/browse/MACOSX_PORT-105 Conclusion: Apple's JVM team think this model is better for solving end users problem with JVM compatibility.

andos 15y ago
The suggested "bring your own" model of software deployment solves a lot of support problems, too.
- ROFISH 15y ago
  Yes, but "bring your own" solves a lot of Apple's support problems related to sole exclusivity on old and insecure JVMs.
dave1010uk 15y ago
Does this mean all Java software that's distributed in this new way has to be compatible with OpenDK's license?

DrJokepu 15y ago

It's also a known fact that the CEOs of these two companies are very close friends; it's unthinkable that they couldn't sort out an issue like that.

viraptor 15y ago

I like how you put those 2 sentences together: > This is pure unfounded speculation. > In reality Apple probably wanted to make the Lion base install leaner. Can't agree more - pure speculation.

bascule 15y ago
Apple's "leaner install base" for Lion seems to ship with Oracle's VisualVM tool, which won't work until you install Java
st3fan 15y ago
The thing that annoys me is that people always thing the worst when something happens in Apple land. Most of the times things happen because they simply make sense.
- fauigerzigerk 15y ago
  That's absolutely right. The problem is just that not everything that makes sense for Apple's bottom line makes sense for mine. For instance, deleting everything from my iPod without warning probably made sense for Apple's copyright negatiations with media companies. It didn't make much sense to me. Censoring dictonaries and banning everything sexual, satirical, political or otherwise "unclean" from the app store probably makes sense for Apple. Makes no sense to me. So, I guess, the issue I have with the phrase "making sense" is that it obfiuscates the fact that everyone has their own vested interests and the vested interests of a particular large corporation are sometimes very different from mine.
  - sedev 15y ago
    "the vested interests of a particular large corporation are sometimes very different from mine." Couldn't agree more! Especially when it comes to large corporations where you are a product being sold to advertisers, they're even worse than large corporations that accept money from you in return for goods and services.
    - 15y ago