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Tue, Nov 13, 2007
13949712720901ForOSX
As posted before, there's no Java SE 6 runtime environment included in Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). There is a quite nice Java 5.0 implementation, however, and you can even tune its GUIs better than before for special Mac OS X integration - which is really cool! But this doesn't help you much if you have to develop applications using the latest Java APIs.
To request an important enhancement like this, there is an official way: File a bug report (I did so, my report got number #5575846). This won't help a lot, either, because bug reports requesting Java 6 will be marked as duplicate... and then Apple falls silent again :-(
So, to draw some attention to this problem, someone suggested that all bloggers should use a common marker as a "public request" to Apple, and here it is:
13949712720901ForOSX
Now, the management at Apple can simply google for this string and see how many bloggers (let alone the non-blogging people) are waiting for Java 6 on Mac OS X 10.5 (or at least a statement about the future of Java on OS X).
In the meantime, someone else has ported the FreeBSD JDK 1.6 to Mac OS X (10.4 and 10.5). The port still has some problems and currently relies on X11, but this is a cool project for sure. Nonetheless, I'd still like Apple to officially release their port of Java SE 6 with proper GUI integration, as this would be the best statement about the Mac as a serious platform for Java development.