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by Marc Logemann.
Original Post: why java sucks on Mac
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All in all i am quite a big fan of Apple Hardware and the OS itself but after months of developing java on it, my conclusion is rather dissapointing. All in all i really must say that: java on Mac OS X SUCKS
First, the releases are so delayed on this platform that you can only say that Apple just dont care about Java.
Second. the stability of new releases is so bad that most of the time i am switching the "current JDK" depending on what java app i want to start. Sine most of my developer tools are also java based, i am noticing that over and over again.
Lets take IntelliJ IDEA. After latest Java update on Mac OS X (did it 2 weeks ago), selecting menuitems from the menu just have no effect from time to time. As Jetbrains stated, its about a bug in the Quartz font area. Other apps simply dont start with latest update.
Third. The Java Printing System which comes since 1.4 is totally crap on Mac OS X. This is extremely fascinating since OpenJDK on Linux also uses CUPS for printing (as Mac OS X) but nevertheless on Mac OS X, you get numerous problems with RAW printing, while on Linux, everything is fine.
From a java developer standpoint, it makes not that much sense to use a mac because on both other main OS platforms (Windows and Linux), the JDK/JRE feels much more polished and stable. On the other hand i dont want to change the OS.
So come on Apple. It cant be so hard to maintain this. Most likely Apple can use 95% out of the box of the OpenJDK and the rest of the OS integration shouldnt be too much for a tech company. I think they still dont realize that JAVA is the main development environment for most developers using Mac, not Objective-C.
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