Sure, the problem is - Java apps did neither. Looking good? The default Swing metal theme was truly awful. It was possible to switch to Windows-like theme, but

Sure, the problem is - Java apps did neither. Looking good? The default Swing metal theme was truly awful. It was possible to switch to Windows-like theme, but it was even more awful - it had plenty of visual glitches and things misplaced by a few pixels it couldn't even use the native file selector window. Working well? Startup times and performance was terrible compared to native apps, and memory usage is still abysmal. And you got occasional GC pauses even in well optimised apps. I still sometimes run into occasional lags in Idea, even though Jetbrains did a lot of great work to polish the user experience. Doing what they want? That depends on the programmer, but, besides developer utilities like IDEs, I can't think of a Java app that didn't have a better looking and more polished native competition.