As many have pointed out, Java 6 SE is missing from Mac OS X Leopard. Apple had committed to Java 6 SE, and even seeded a preview for Tiger, to give developers a head start. Now, Leopard is out, Java 6 SE is missing, and there is silence from Cupertino.

I am not suggesting that Apple must, under any circumstances, deliver all APIs that they make technical previews available for… but silence is not good for anyone involved. It prevents developers from moving forward with code they’ve already written. It reminds me of our ongoing transition away from Joomla. We held out for the better part of a year, were given assurances from Joomla core team members… only to get stabbed in the back for pointing out that those features wound up being missing from the latest version of Joomla. The result? Joomla turned a friend into someone critical of the entire project.

Apple needs to realize there are a lot of people that embrace Java over Cocoa, and that official APIs need to remain official and current unless they become deprecated. It is a company’s job to make sure that deprecated components are announced clearly and as soon as possible to developers, and the company should make transition away from such APIs easy and logical. I can someone understand a bunch of unpaid open source developers getting this wrong… I shudder to think that Apple may get this wrong.

However, I doubt Apple will. I suspect that Apple, upon deciding to deprecate Java on iPhone (and leave it out of the offering entirely) decided to deprecate Java in Leopard on Mac as well. I suspect that there are ongoing negotiations with Sun as to how to proceed, and that Apple could not make an announcement about handing off or deprecating Java while they are in talks with Sun. I also suspect that Apple had planned for those talks to be resolved for Leopard to release, and that they simply taking much longer than expected. Sun has never handled Java code for Apple officially… Apple has always lead the development, starting back from Macintosh Runtime for Java (MRJ) in the Mac OS Classic days. I certainly can understand if Sun is reluctant to want to instantly pick up the torch, without some form of financial support from Apple to do the job right.