Java is not so dead after all...

The announcement came from Oracle, a few weeks after Apple's declaration (see Java is dead! Long live Java?).

Basically all of Apple's Java efforts will be handled by Oracle, within the OpenJDK project and Oracle will release Java for Apple machines, not Apple anymore.

If you are interested in declarations, check this link: OpenJDK News, Nov. 12.

Before OpenJDK took charge of the OSX version of Java, there were a number of projects that attempted to use the FreeBSD version of OpenJDK to create something that would run under OSX.

Now, OSX has its own development project at OpenJDK and things are slowly progressing, which is a very good thing...

The project goals are:

• Pass all appropriate certification tests for Java SE 7
  
• Include a complete, native Cocoa-based UI Toolkit
  
• Provide excellent performance
  

Which basically translates into: what Apple has been providing us with since the beginning of OSX, but by the people who are behind Java (and hopefully with simultaneous Windows/Linux/OSX releases).

If you want to build Java on OSX, you can. Follow the instructions on this page: Mac OS X Port. I have built Java 1.7 on my machine and it worked well with OmegaT. The only problem is that the UI toolkit still depends on X11, which means that your favorite Java application will not look like a native citizen of OSX. But that will happen!

If you want to see how the project advances and check the discussions (and participate in case you have a problem building the thing for example) check the following links:

• Mac OS X Port Project Status
  
• macosx-port-dev -- Technical discussion about the Mac OS X Port Project
  

The questions that remain unanswered are the following:

1. Will Java 1.7 on OSX be available at the time OSX 10.7 Lion is released next summer?
   
2. If not, will OSX 10.7 Lion include the current Apple released Java 1.6 by default an all new machines?
   
3. Once Java 1.7 is released by Oracle, will Apple include it in OSX bundles or will users have to go fetch it from Oracle's site ?
   

My take is that Java 1.7 will not be finished by the time Lion is released, and for the rest, I have no idea.
I'd like to say "yes" for a default Java 1.6 in Lion and "possible" for inclusion of Oracle's Java in further releases (after all OSX bundles plenty of third party development tools). We'll see.

But the future is definitely much brighter than it was back in October.

Java is dead! Long live Java?

[update July 2018]

This post is very outdated, but for some reason it still seems to attract a lot of readers. So here is the update:

Some applications still require Java 1.6 for the Mac. Apple still offers a Java 1.6 package that, at the time of this writing, works from Lion to High Sierra:

"Download Java for OS X 2017-001" (this is a link to the support article where you'll find the download link).

The best pro-applications for translators are still mostly Java applications*. OmegaT 3.6 requires at least Java 1.6 and OmegaT 4.1 requires Java 1.8. Unless your Mac is really old, you have access to Java 1.8 directly from Oracle, since, as described below, Apple has stopped offering direct Java downloads.

Soylatte does not exist anymore. Now everything is officially released by Oracle. If you need Java downloads, check here. Do not install Java 9 or 10 right now unless you know what you're doing.

Et voilà !

* Maxprograms has started working on a new multiplatform technology for its latest TMXEditor program: Javascript in the browser. Not free software but better than the Heartsome's defunct TMXEditor (buggy when running with recent versions of Java) and OkapiFramework's Olifant that works fine as a .Net application when run from Windows (in VirtualBox for ex.) but has not been updated for years in its Java incarnation...

---

Apple just released a new update for Java 1.6 (both for OSX 10.6 and OSX 10.5, available from Software Update), pretty much the same day Steve Jobs introduce us to a few features of the upcoming version of OSX, 10.7 aka Lion.

The theme of the presentation was "Back to the Mac". Triple layered meaning...

1. Back to the Mac after spending so much time and energy on iOS and mobile devices
   
2. Software improvements to OSX directly coming from the iOS experience
   
3. Hardware improvements to the MacBook with the new incarnation of the MacBook Air, inheriting a lot of cool technology from the iPad.
   

The presentation is available directly from Apple's page. Skip the iLife stuff and directly go to minute 53' to see the OSX part. The App Store and Mission Control parts are really interesting.

Then, in my inbox, came the Java update. After a good news, a bad one (well, hopefully only half bad). 

Quoting Apple: As of the release of Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 3, the version of Java that is ported by Apple, and that ships with Mac OS X, is deprecated.

The full release note is here: Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 3 and 10.5 Update 8 Release Notes

Shocking news.

For translators on the Mac, Java applications are the key to freedom from Windows, even though a lot of "switchers" use the Mac mostly to provide their Windows environment with a stable virtual foundation... On the top of my mind, here are the mainstream applications that depend on Java and are vital for translators who do not rely on Windows:

• Cafetrans
  
• Okapi Framework
  
• OmegaT
  
• Swordfish
  
• Wordfast Pro
  

If you read between the lines of the release note though, you can see that what is deprecated is no Java on the Mac in general, but "the version of Java that is ported by Apple, and that ships with Mac OS X".

With the recent acquisition of Sun by Oracle (Oracle makes massive use of Java), the opening of the JDK source by Sun a few years ago and the currently existing efforts to port that OpenJDK to the Mac, one can also see that move as a way for Apple to say that Mac users will not be left without Java on the Mac, because either Oracle or the OpenJDK community will eventually deliver something that Java users on Mac can still use to run their favorite applications.

In any case, it will eventually be possible to install a foreign (compatible) JRE on Mac that runs all our applications. I've tried a few days ago with Soylatte but I was not able to fully run OmegaT in it, and the windowing system was X11 (with all its UI glitches).

Still, as was mentioned today on the Java-dev list hosted by Apple, it is very unlikely that Apple will just remove Java from OSX. Java is big in education and multiplatform development and Apple has 20% of the PC share in the US as of today (cf the very first part of today's presentation). So Apple is probably thinking of something else.

In any case, right now I don't think Mac users of Java apps have anything to fear. They can keep their Snow Leopard Mac with the latest supported Java and don't have to upgrade to anything. We have about 8 months before Lion's release, hopefully Java we'll be there too in one form or another.

And apologies for the 10 months long blank on this blog...

(updated on 10/22)

New update (10/22): Steve Jobs hints at a different approach, via Hacker News: "Sun (now Oracle) supplies Java for all other platforms. They have their own release schedules, which are almost always different than ours, so the Java we ship is always a version behind. This may not be the best way to do it"