Yesterday, Michael Urban had some harsh criticism for Apple’s handling of Java in Leopard. There’s a lot of discontent in the Java world because Java 1.6 (err, Java 6) did not make the cut for Leopard, and Urban says that Java 1.5 (Java 5, if you work for Sun) is broken in Leopard as well.
Ben Galbraith throws a bit of water on Urban’s complaints, pointing out that while Apple did not deliver Java 1.6, they don’t appear to be pulling back on their commitment to Java in general.
What’s interesting to me is that all of this grousing regards client side Java, which I tend to associate mainly with Java development tools. I guess it’s good that there are still people out there who care about being able to write applications in Java that look like native Windows and OS X applications. Everything I write in Java winds up in a WAR file.
Update: Ted Leung posts about open source Java and how it might have made it easier for Apple to get Java 6 into Leopard.