Apple recently joined forces with Oracle to create an open source Java implementation for the Mac OS X through the OpenJDK project, which both companies announced on November 12. Apple is the second major partner, after IBM, which announced its support in February to jump on the OpenJDK bandwagon. After Apple’s decision to stop development on its own implementation of the Java runtime environment, this move is leading signals to the company’s intention to continue the support platform, but to shift the ultimate responsibility for the development of Java 7 for Mac OS X to Oracle, along with the open-source community.
Last month, Apple made the decision to “deprecate” or freeze its own implementation of Java 6 SE (Special Edition). With the previous announcement that Java-based apps would not be approved for the forthcoming Mac Ap Store, this move led to the concerns that Java was being left out of the Mac. In the recent announcements, Apple mentioned that it would provide most of the key components, tools and technologies for the Java 7 Development Kit, and open them as part of the OpenJDK project. Apple will soon provide both 32-bit and 64-bit HotSpot virtual machines as well as class libraries, the networking stack, and “the foundation for a new graphical client.”
Apple also confirmed that the new terminal stable version of the Java Standard Edition (Java SE 6 Update 3) will be provided with Mac OS X Lion as well as Snow Leopard. There is no indication of a change of position on the banning of Java from the Mac App Store. “That’s critical if Java is to have a future role on the Mac as anything other than one for Java developers building apps for deployment on Linux,” Forrester Research analyst Jeffrey Hammond said in an email to Computerworld reporter Chris Kanaracus.
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