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The entire premise of the article is flawed in comparing what Apple is releasing to what someone else built using the OpenJDK sources, e.g. OpenJDK does not support native L&F on OS X.

jeremycrosbie: that is not the point Alex made. The problem is that mac users have been waiting for Java6 for a long time and Apple has decided to finally release but only for their latest OS. Its obvious to expect that Tiger/Leopard jdk6 implementations may have some differences, but we are talking about Apple! they know the APIs, they pay people to do that kind of work. Alex's frustration is understandable, that is the point of his post.

I guess we will have to disagree on the point of the post. But to address an element of your comment, sure, Apple could have supported Tiger and other previous versions. But that all costs money and sets a precedent for expecting Apple to provide such support in the future. That is THE problem Microsoft has lived with since, well, forever, and Apple has chosen not to go that route at the expense of upsetting a minority (arguably) of its user base.

If there is really a large Java developer base for OS X then that will translate into more hardware and OS sales for Apple. Sounds like a great way to profit from their Java investment. And if Java doesn't turn out to be a profitable enough value-add, then I won't be surprised to see it go away.

@jeremycrosbie: But the fact is that Apple has touted Mac OS X as a top notch Java development platform, and many many Java developers (myself included) have jumped over to Mac OS X, only to be bitten by Apple's ridiculously long delay. The opening paragraph of the Java page on ADC spouts:
"Mac OS X is the only major consumer operating system that comes complete with a fully configured and ready-to-use Java runtime and development environment. Professional Java developers are increasingly turning to the feature-rich Mac OS X as the operating system of choice for both Mac-based and cross-platform Java development projects."

But yet they are over a year behind on their officially supported Java platform.

i don't think so.
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