Nearly two months on from the release of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and the resulting uproar from Java developers over Apple’s silent removal of preview builds of Java 6 for Mac, Apple has just as quietly released Java SE 6 Developer Preview 8, the first developer preview of Java 6 that runs on Leopard.
Many developers had feared that the removal of the previous preview signalled an intent from Apple to ignore Java 6 in favour of continued minor tweaks to Java 5. It seems now that the optimists were right: Apple just needed more time to get Java 6 right, so it took a step back and made some improvements to Java 5 for the Leopard release before pressing on with its work on Java 6.
The fact remains that if Apple were only to communicate with its closest allies—software developers—in a meaningful way, we wouldn’t be left playing these guessing games over the company’s intentions.
Kevin YankKevin Yank is an accomplished web developer, speaker, trainer and author of Build Your Own Database Driven Website Using PHP & MySQL and Co-Author of Simply JavaScript and Everything You Know About CSS is Wrong! Kevin loves to share his wealth of knowledge and it didn't stop at books, he's also the course instructor to 3 online courses in web development. Currently Kevin is the Director of Front End Engineering at Culture Amp.
