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Java Word of the Day: 13949712720901ForOSX

URL: Vote for Java 6 on Leopard

At 11:17 AM on Nov 3, 2007, Geertjan wrote:

Recent discussions about the support for Java 6 on Leopard have resulted in a colorful debate. The debate seems to have focused around three themes. In the first place, consternation around the question of the lack of Java 6 support on Leopard. While focusing on cool iPhones and other consumer goodies, what investment has Apple put in Java? To what extent does it care about Java at all? Has it decided to focus purely on consumers and abandon developers altogether?

Flowing from these questions, comes a second batch of concerns, around the question of "who is responsible". Apple? Or Sun? Ben Galbraith's blog (some of it in response to Mike's article here on Javalobby ) has a lot of interesting discussion around this, with a number of diverging points, one of which is "I suspect as time passes, more improvements will come out and folks will understand just how busy the Apple Java team has been." In other words, at least part of the argument here is that one needs to give Apple time and that Apple is committed to Java, despite its silence.

But, in the third place, it's that silence that's the most confusing, because until it ends, we're all pretty much guessing. The question of responsibility, in this poll on java.net , indicates that of 1068 people, 49.1% believe that it is Sun who needs to carry the can in terms of delivering the goods. Whether that is true or not, the silence on the Mac OS X Leopard page remains deafening. Lots of big flashy pics, but what's the story about Java? The intervention by James Gosling posits that support for Java on the Mac is not done by Sun "because Apple wanted to do it... They've wanted to do all sorts of customization and integration that only they could do - because they own the OS."

Through all these mixed interpretations... one man steps forward: Henry Story ( interviewed here a few weeks ago on Javalobby ). What does he propose? Read his blog entry from yesterday, Vote for Java6 on Leopard! . "Following the noble example given to us by Nova Spivack, when he asked for people to make their voice heard in support of the Burmese people and got some real results , let us do the same to help Apple make the right decision." By putting the following string in your blog, or other on-line information, all those who would like to make their voice heard to Apple, about the lack of Java6 support, will be findable on the web:

13949712720901ForOSX

The first part of the string is the decimal notation for 0xCAFEBABE (although it turns out to be slightly incorrect and therefore even more unique), the magic cookie for JavaClass files ( more on that here ). When the string is searched for, by means of putting it into a Google search , for example, all those wanting to "motivate the managers at Apple to invest more time on Java and be more open about their plans with the community" can be identified in one go. That's a great idea and I'm hoping Henry will come up with some handy semantic web techniques to make use of the data that will be gathered in this way! Let's support this endeavor to help Java6 find its way onto Leopard soon.