14 DAY TRIAL // Developers were rather surprised with the final version of Leopard, as it contained an older implementation of Java, instead of the latest version. Despite rumors to the contrary, Apple and Sun have nor grown apart and continue working closely together.
When developers saw that the Leopard that Apple sells come with Java 1.5 they were quite startled. Developers were widely expecting the latest version as Apple offered it with the preview versions that started at this year?s World Wide Developer?s Conference. Not surprising, this led to talk that the two companies might have hit a rough spot, that determined Apple to go with the older version. Brian Croll, senior director of Mac OS product marketing told Macworld UK that this release is in no way indicative of the relationship between the two companies, and that they continue to work together closely.
The latest version of Java, 1.6, is already available to Windows and Linux users, so it is only a matter of time before it makes it to OS X. It is obvious that Apple has been working on this, otherwise it would not have been part of the developer previews, but decided to pull it at the last minute. Given the frantic schedule for Leopard development and that improvement were made up to the last minute, it is not surprising that the company felt it had better things to focus on.
The advantage of Java 1.6 over the older version is how quickly programs run, a common complaint when it comes to Java applications that are otherwise quite serviceable. "The number one things users see by upgrading is that applications run much faster. Everything's just speedier," a Sun Microsystems spokesperson explained.
Despite not paying much attention to Java, Apple has been taking steps towards implementing support for Sun?s ZFS+ file system. Leopard ships with ZFS support, but it is read-only. Despite this, developers have already seen the test versions of the full support with both read and write capabilities and many power users are excited at the possibilities.