Java for Mac OS X 10.4, Release 6

Only god knows. And by god, I obvioulsy mean steve jobs

Because back when Apple took it upon themselves to do a Java port for their new operating system is was seen as a means to draw the hundreds of thousands of Java developers to the platform.

Now, in 2007 with Mac OS X firmly entrenched, Apple can afford to be a bit lax about it, perhaps even consider if it's worth all the effort any more - perhaps even toy with the idea of dropping development completely.

So now, all those Java developers (this one included) who flocked to the platform are starting to feel the cold. I'm already involved in a project that is being developed to support Java 6 only - ultimately this means I spend most of my day in Boot Camp... questioning whether this Mac was worth the premium I paid over a Vista laptop.

Not for long... all the developers I know (Java and otherwise) are pretty much jumping ship from Apple. It's kind of too bad, considering they're just starting to get some consumer traction. I'm sure there will be many die-hard developers (many of which are probably old NeXTies) that stick with it, but for the rest of us...

Well, if you're used to a modern IDE, XCode is pretty horrible (I use IntelliJ for Java development, and when I got into XCode I feel like I'm being teleported back to the dark ages.) And Java 6 has been out over a year without a peep from Apple. And with Apple deprecating their non-ObjectiveC API (Carbon), who wants to deal with them? Writing with an archaic language like Objective-C is, again, like being teleported back to the dark ages.

All that stuff was shiny and new in the late 1980's. It's time to get with the program.