About half of all sun engineers walk around with a macbook of some sort under their arm. The suggestion that sun doesn't really care about the mac, is, well, a few levels beyond idiotic. I hope your excuse is that you don't meet sun people and don't listen to the java posse, but given this forum's purpose that seems a bit of a stretch.
So why have they outsourced (and continue to keep the status quo) in regards to apple maintaining the JVM on apple? Beats me. I can guesstimate though: Not too long ago, the apple platform was far, FAR smaller than it was now for sun's target market (especially amongst programmer geeks, where mac usage has exploded 50 fold in the past 4 years. Not kidding on that number. The userbase of apple way back then was gfx designers, mostly, which at the time had absolutely nothing to do with java). Apple had, at that time, also indicated quite clearly they were going to be vastly superior in porting and maintaining the JVM than sun could ever be, for these reasons: 1) Apple publically stated their intent to take java seriously. At one point apple was trying to (or at least seemed to, apple's usual tight lipped-ness has been going on for about a decade) move from carbon to the JVM and java for writing your average mac app. It included loads of access layers for java to do things that work only on macs, including QT4Java. Since then apple has cancelled this plan and went to Objective C (with cocoa) instead, and has dropped support for QT4Java and those other extensions, but at the time - it was a near sure thing. 2) Os X was tiny, rapidly changing, and apple offered to take care of it. No brainer. 3) The os x platform is very different from linux/windows. Apps aren't just started by way of 'an executable' (there are app packages), various menus really HAVE to be in specific places or you really stick out like a sore thumb, you can't run the same app twice (if that is a sensible use-case, the app must spawn another window instead), and many other differences. For sun to port JVM to os x properly, it would have taken them a lot of resources. #1 and #2 are no longer true. #3 is true, but by now sun has plenty of macheads, so its no problem. So why isn't sun taking back control? I'm guessing that, with the openjdk and people like Landon Fuller proving the usefulness of open sourcing java to sun, they (correctly, in my opinion) assume that there isn't much value in spending the resources. Sure, openjdk is just now becoming feasible, and the java- on-os x situation has been a bit sour for a year or two now, but sun knew all about open sourcing java 2 years ago. Business-wise, its all sorts of sensible. As far as user bases are concerned: Blanket comparisons are ridiculous. Look at your target market, and try to figure out the difference. Amongst hipster web 2.0 using early adopters and developers, apple controls OVER HALF THE MARKET. If this group is important to you, not having a mac app is suicidal. Not having a windows app is not a good idea, but its been done before with success. Social Media folk are similarly mac-heavy, as are designers and the movie biz. On the other hand, your average office worker has odds better than 99 to 1 that it's a PC, and linux has more penetration in that market than the mac. On Jan 25, 12:42 am, mikaelgrev <[email protected]> wrote: > OK, sorry, I took it from memory. > > This report seems to show it is 11 times more: > > http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=9 > > I guess it depends on who you ask. But I constantly read something > like 7-8% for Macs and < 1% for Linux when "normal" users, and not > developers, are counted. > > Cheers, > Mikael > > On Jan 25, 12:20 am, Casper Bang <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Jan 25, 12:00 am, mikaelgrev <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > some seven time larger than Linux on the Desktop, yet Sun is caring > > > for Linux, but not OS X. Strange business to me. > > > Where do you have those numbers from? Mac's might have gained growth > > the last couple of years, but according to various sources > > (i.e.http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php) we're talking about a 2x > > difference. Sun obviously cares for all platforms, that's the whole > > philosophy behind Java. But obviously they also have to prioritize, > > it's not like all is rosy on Linux either where we're still waiting > > for JavaFX support and proper browser support. It's a little amusing > > these days to listen to all the Java developing Windows-refugees now > > whining from their even more proprietary and locked down platform. > > > /Casper --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
