A couple fact checks: On Oct 21, 2:44 pm, "Joe Nuxoll (Java Posse)" <[email protected]> wrote: > Note that Apple > never took on building their own version of Flash to ship on their > platform, because Adobe saw value in building a Mac version - because > Adobe's target customer was already living in Mac land.
Actually, they did. QuickTime could embed Flash media in a QT movie and use it as a Wired Sprite, and Apple actually delivered their own implementation of Flash, inside QuickTime, up to about Flash 5 or so. I think it was finally disabled three or four years ago after some serious security holes were found in it. Still, point taken: Adobe's customers use Macs, so they have to provide both a runtime and creative tools on Mac if they want to succeed. > Apple had to > build their own JavaVM because at the time, nobody saw fit to make a > Mac version because their desktop market share was tiny. If you're talking about the JDK, I'll agree. Sun punted on their Mac JDK after a half-hearted 1.0 (legend has it that it was the work of a single engineer). However, in the mid to late 90's, there were many third-party VMs, from either IDE makers (Metrowerks, Symantec, Roaster) or browser makers (Netscape, Microsoft). Because they were all over the map in terms of compatibility and behavior, Apple insisted on taking over to provide a level of consistency, by putting the "Macintosh Runtime for Java" into the OS (and becoming the only OS vendor to include with a standard, compatible version of Java throughout the next decade… many Linux distros shunned Java for not being F/OSS, and Microsoft's shenanigans are well-known). For a look at the old mess, here's an article from 1997 comparing various JVMs for Mac: http://www.macobserver.com/features/jvm.shtml In a way, that may be the world we're heading back to. But then again, that makes the Mac no different from Windows or Linux, where you generally don't get a JVM with the OS, and you can choose between several (Sun's, IBM's, JRocket, etc.). --Chris -- 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.
