[FUGSPBR] OT: Java (Apple Darwin - BSD)

[all.mac em eudoramail.com]

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-07-2001/jw-0727-macworld_p.html




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

Strong Java support from Apple continues with Mac OS X

Summary
The combination of Apple's Titanium laptop with the soon-to-be released 
Mac OS X version 10.1 present two compelling reasons for you to make the 
Mac your Java development platform. In this article, Daniel Steinberg 
reports from last week's Macworld Expo in New York on Apple's Java news. 
(1,600 words)
By Daniel H. Steinberg



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.

Furthermore, Apple now includes a developer's CD in every Mac OS X copy. 
With that move, every Mac hobbyist who wants to create an application 
has the tool support. Indeed, developers can use Apple's Project Builder 
IDE for developing Java applications, although, as a multi-language IDE, 
it does not provide the best support for Java. The tools bundle includes 
the MRJAppBuilder to convert your Java applications into 
double-clickable Mac applications. As such, you can take Java class 
files from another platform, port them to the Mac, then wrap them with 
MRJAppBuilder to produce applications that look as if they were 
developed on and for Mac OS X. Apple does, however, suggest that for Mac 
OS X-targeted applications, you take some time to make the experience 
more Mac-like. For example, the wording and order of menus is different 
in native Windows and Mac applications. You should display the menus 
appropriate to the OS that the Java application will run on.

Java on Mac OS X special features
Apple has taken one of its greatest perceived negatives and turned it 
into a positive over the last few years. The company has long been 
criticized for not knowing whether it was a hardware or a software 
vendor. Today, however, Apple's strategy strives to exploit this 
end-to-end control. You can see this strategy in action with 
hardware-accelerated Swing. Apple engineers can exploit their knowledge 
of the video cards the platform supports. In a demo at the WWDC and 
repeated at JavaOne, Apple showed a G4 Mac rotating an image while a 
Pentium IV with four times the clock speed attempted the same task. The 
G4 effortlessly flipped the image over and over while the Pentium IV 
struggled to rerender the image and jerk it forward little by little.

IDEs benefit from hardware acceleration
Hardware acceleration represents good news for developers who want to 
make the Mac their development platform. Many IDEs are large Swing 
applications that look and feel better with this improved responsiveness.

Currently, hardware acceleration is an available option in the 
developer's preview available from Apple's Apple Developer Connection 
(ADC). The ADC has made the developer's preview available to both its 
paying and free members, but you'll have to join first. For now, you'll 
find hardware acceleration turned off by default, but the Readme 
includes directions for setting the flag before running your Java 
application.

Indeed, Borland's JBuilder 5 beta advises you to run this developer 
release of Java and turn hardware acceleration on to take advantage of 
its IDE. Borland will finalize JBuilder 5 on the Mac once developers 
have access to the final version of Java 1.3.1. The JBuilder 5 demo also 
showcases how well a large, full-featured Java application can run.

Seamless to the user
Moneydance personal finance software serves as an example of a consumer 
application written in Java on Mac OS X. The application installs easily 
and runs like any other Mac OS X application. Consumers need not know 
the application was developed in Java. Sean Riley, CTO of Appgen 
Personal Software, began developing Moneydance on Linux. After looking 
to deploy on Mac OS X, he was drawn to the platform and now does all of 
his Java development on Mac OS X.

Apple Java-enables its own technologies
Apple has also been Java-enabling its own technology. Apple engineers 
rewrote WebObjects 5 in Java, and they added QuickTime 5 API support to 
QuickTime for Java. In addition, Apple is wrapping some of Mac OS X's 
functionality in JavaBeans available to developers. For example, you can 
provide any Swing text component with the Cocoa spell checking 
capabilities with just a couple of lines of code. If you develop on an 
IDE, you can manipulate this bean as you would any other. Indeed, you 
can view and change its properties to configure it for your application. 
Apple has also wrapped Carbon's speech recognition and synthesizer 
capabilities in JavaBeans so you can add them to your applications. You 
can still write applications that "run anywhere" -- they just run better 
on a Mac.

Limitations of developing on a Mac
The news isn't all good for Mac Java developers. If you need to access 
the latest J2SE beta releases, you'll either have to hang on to your 
Windows box or simply wait. Although Mac users have relatively quick 
access to final JDK and JVM releases, the Apple Java team just isn't big 
enough to deliver betas. While the JDK 1.4 beta has been available for a 
couple of months to Solaris and Windows users, Apple's only 1.4 
announcement is that it will be finalized shortly after Sun delivers the 
official shipping release.

Sun needs to provide more support
Apple engineers commonly cite the cooperation and support they receive 
from Sun. They speak of the collaboration with the Sun engineers across 
the street, as well as the Sun engineers on loan to the Apple Java team. 
With the commitment that Apple has made to Java, Sun owes Apple more. 
Even though Sun has to create the Windows implementation of Java, it 
could at least provide more engineers to help Apple in its porting 
efforts. It's like high school dating. You had no interest in that 
person who would do anything for you; meanwhile, you hopelessly pursued 
the popular one who could have cared less about you. It would be nice to 
see Sun putting more effort into helping with the Java implementation on 
the Mac.

Developers clamor for more Mac OS X Java support
Further, in public Apple will only commit to supporting the official 
J2SE stack. Apple developers, however, again and again ask for certain 
packages. Apple has announced that it will soon support Java Web Start, 
JSSE (Java Secure Socket Extension), and then look at Java 3D. Apple 
engineers note that since the other pieces fit well on top of it, they 
have focused hard on supporting the J2SE core and improving the 
performance. As for Java 2, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) support, 
enterprise applications can currently run on Mac OS X; Apple just won't 
promise you that they will. As the Mac OS X server story evolves, we may 
hear more about J2EE support.

Interface Builder is Apple's tool for visually providing the Aqua look 
and feel to Cocoa applications. Java developers consistently request 
that Apple provide Interface Builder support for building Java apps. At 
conferences Apple always responds that it has no plans to add such 
support. Indeed, the company recommends JBuilder 5 as the tool for 
visually designing Swing components.

The future
Within two months, when Apple ships Mac OS X 10.1 with Java 1.3.1 
included, the entire Mac OS X install base will have free access to the 
most up-to-date version of Java. Moreover, right now you can choose from 
a variety of Java development tools available on the Mac, with more on 
the way. With Microsoft pulling Java support from Windows XP, Mac OS X 
represents today's strongest platform for client-side Java development. 
Considering all that, current Windows-based Java developers who don't 
require Java beta releases should think about moving from Windows to Mac 
OS X.

	About the author
Daniel Steinberg is the director of Java offerings at Dim Sum Thinking, 
Inc. He learned to program in C and C++ on a Macintosh to help his 
research on elastic curves in hyperbolic space before moving to Java. 
Daniel teaches courses in Java and object-oriented architecture and 
design, and has become quite fond of many of the practices of XP. He 
cowrote the Java2 Bible from Hungry Minds. He thinks that the first 
words spoken by his daughter Maggie Rose were "my Mac" -- his wife 
thinks Maggie was saying "Mama." Maggie knows that she was asking 
clearly for an "iMac" and keeps hinting that an iBook would be nice for 
her fifth birthday. Her younger sister Elena is less subtle and has 
announced that now that she's two she "needs" a Titanium Powerbook.
Home | Mail this Story | Resources and Related Links

Advertisement: Support JavaWorld, click here!


(c) Copyright 2001 IDG.net, an IDG Communications company

Resources

*	For Daniel Steinberg's report from January's Macworld Expo, see 
"Macworld Report: Big News for Macintosh Enthusiasts," (JavaWorld, 
January 2001):
http://www.javaworld.com/jw-01-2001/jw-0119-macworld.html
*	"Macworld: Java 2 for the Mac Almost Ready," (JavaWorld, August 
2000), Daniel Steinberg's Java report from the Summer 2000 Macworld 
Expo, can be found by going to:
http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-08-2000/jw-0804-macworld.html
*	"Microsoft Throws Java Out of Windows XP," Kuriko Miyake and 
Stephen Lawson (JavaWorld, July 2001):
http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-07-2001/jw-0718-idgns-xpjava.html
*	For all Macintosh-related Java articles on JavaWorld, go to the 
Mac-specific Java section of our Topical Index:
http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/topicalindex/jw-ti-macjava.html
*	The Macworld Expo Website can be found at:
http://www.Macworldexpo.com/
*	For more on Apple's Java efforts, see the company's Java 
developers' page at:
http://developer.apple.com/java/
*	JBuilder is available from Borland at:
http://www.borland.com
*	Moneydance:
http://www.moneydance.com
*	Sign up for the JavaWorld This Week free weekly email newsletter to 
learn what's new at JavaWorld:
http://www.idg.net/jw-subscribe
*	You'll find a wealth of IT-related articles from our sister 
publications at IDG.net

Send feedback
URL: http://www.javaworld.com/jw-07-2001/jw-0727-macworld.html
Last modified: Friday, July 27, 2001

----
Para sair da lista envie um e-mail para majordomo em fugspbr.org
com as palavras "unsubscribe fugspbr" no corpo da mensagem.