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Macworld: Will Mac OS X be your next development platform?

Strong Java support from Apple continues with Mac OS X

By Daniel H. Steinberg, JavaWorld.com, 07/27/01

July 27, 2001 -- It's been a busy six months for Apple. As promised, in March the company shipped Mac OS X with Java 1.3 installed as part of the OS. That fact alone makes the Mac a great target platform for deploying Java applications. Many of the sessions at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in May were led by the Java team who are improving Java's performance on the platform. Further, for the first time Sun Microsystems will incorporate some of Apple's innovations into future JVM releases. Moreover, Apple's message at June's JavaOne conference was summed up by its Java Technology Manager Alan Samuel: "We at least want you to target Mac OS X when you deploy your applications. After that, we want you to consider Mac OS X for your development." At last week's Macworld Expo in New York, you could see products doing just that.

Mac OS X and Java

Past Java-on-the-Mac articles in JavaWorld noted Apple's promised Java features in Mac OS X, as well as reviews of what features were in beta. Now that the OS is shipping, we can take a closer look.

Every Mac a Java 1.3 machine

Every Mac shipped today comes preinstalled with Mac OS X, each copy of which features Java 2, Standard Edition (J2SE) 1.3. By September, Apple will ship J2SE 1.3.1 with Mac OS X, and every current Mac OS X user will be entitled to a free upgrade. At the same time, Microsoft will ship its final version of IE 5.1 for Mac OS X that will include browser support for Java 2 applets. Both developments represent compelling reasons for Java developers to target Mac OS X: there is a single VM for the Mac, and the client already has it installed. Consequently, your application's downloads will be smaller.

Apple's Java performance twist

Apple has also improved the Java user experience by sharing libraries in an interesting way. Some of Java's performance improvements stem from smarter garbage collection. The idea: objects that have been around a while tend to stay around a long time, so they don't need to be polled quite as often. Apple, taking the idea further, looked at classes that remain unchanged between different applications. For example, two applications could share the same Swing code base. This sharing means that your second Java application will load much more quickly, and the total footprint will be smaller. Under this setup your first Java application's startup time remains quite slow, but this should improve with September's Mac OS X 10.1 release.

Java tools for the Mac

Because Apple built Mac OS X on top of Unix, you'll find your favorite command-line tools available to you. It's great to spot Sun employees and hardcore Java developers at conferences working away at Jini or server-side Java applications on their Titaniums. They usually have the terminal open (you can find the Terminal application in Applications/Utilities), and use either Emacs or vi along with javac. At May's WWDC, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that by the end of the year, Apple would be the leading Unix provider. While you don't have to use the Unix tools, those who wish to will find BSD Unix with the enhanced C shell.