Halloween may have passed, but some of last week's Java news is still casting a creepy pall on the Java landscape. Last week I reported on Apple's decision to deprecate Java on Mac OS X and Doug Lea's departure from the JCP's Executive Committee, but as my conversations with analyst and industry watchers continued, and I thought the additional insights were worth sharing.
Forrester Research Senior Analyst Jeffrey S. Hammond, for example, reminded me that the rules for the upcoming Mac App Store reject deprecated or "optionally installed technologies."
"What we're seeing here is the emergence of the application store as the new strategic control point for platforms," Hammond said. "From my perspective, Apple's decision is an extension of its low-intensity warfare against the Java platform, the Flash platform, and everything else that allows people to do cross-platform work in their ecosystem."
Which made me wonder if maybe a zombifying virus had gotten loose in Cupertino and caused Apple management to go crazy. The numbers vary from analyst firm to analyst firm, but the basic picture of the developer world going forward includes a steadily expanding community of Java jocks for around a decade before we even see a plateau. And I know a bunch of developers who consider the Mac to be a great machine to code on. How can Apple just dismiss so many Java-loving codederos?
"Here's your choice as a developer," he said. "You can write in Java as you've always done and have it ported to the Mac through third-party efforts, or you can write in Objective C and go directly to the consumer and make more money. Which would you chose?"
Ovum Senior Analyst Tony Baer's assessment was no more comforting. "It's all about making the Mac more iOS like," Baer said. "Jobs may talk up an HTML5 storm, but what he's really saying is: 'Develop natively for the Apple platform.' Java is not part that plan.' More
Posted by John K. Waters on November 1, 20108 comments
QCon, my very favorite tech conference, is right around the corner and I'm already wishing I had the powers of The X-Men's Multiple Man, so that I could get to more sessions! (I actually wish that a lot.)
I've been to quite a few trade shows and user conferences in my 15-plus years on the tech beat. I don't mean to sound pollyanna, but most of them have been pretty good events. But in terms of the quality and scope of its content, QCon stands out. Conference organizers characterize it as a "practitioner-driven event." I think of it as the Cornucopia Conference.
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Posted by John K. Waters on October 26, 20100 comments
Big announcements coming out of the annual Adobe MAX conference, underway this week in L.A. Lots of talk about the "multiscreen revolution," of course, and how to get your apps and your content to work across PCs, smart phones, tablets and TVs. Adobe is touting its Flash platform as well as HTML5 for Web sites, digital publishing, online video, gaming and even enterprise apps.
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Posted by John K. Waters on October 25, 20100 comments
The big news this week for developers was the revelation that the new keeper of the Java flame, Oracle, is getting into bed with IBM on the OpenJDK project. The blogosphere was buzzing with the news, but a few posts stood out, reminding me to make sure I follow these guys.
Bob Sutor, vice president of Open Systems and Linux in IBM's Software Group, posted a widely quoted commentary on the partnership on his blog. This is where the news broke that IBM would be "shifting its development effort from the Apache Project Harmony to OpenJDK." Sutor is an IBMer, but his blog is thoughtful and worth reading. He also maintains a great list of other bloggers under "People and Places."
Mark Reinhold, chief architect of Oracle's Java Platform Group, also blogged about the announcement. Reinhold handled Oracle's side of the story, but also offered his own predictions and expectations about who'll be doing what. Reinhold's blog is worth following for the news he provides, but also for the feedback he gets. Good conversations that include some questions and comments from the likes of another favorite blogger, Simon Phipps, and a bunch of first-string Java jocks More
Posted by John K. Waters on October 15, 20100 comments
Google treated a group of reporters to lunch last Friday in its San Francisco offices (sushi and pizza -- yum!), and we got to meet some happy users of the App Engine and chat with the Google team behind it.
Google's App Engine is a suite of the tools and services for building and scaling Web apps on the company's infrastructure. Applications developed using the App Engine Software Development Kit (SDK) can be uploaded and hosted by Google, and those apps can then utilize Google's bandwidth and computing power. That's a big selling point, Google argues, given Big G's vast, road-tested infrastructure, which is also hosting its own apps.
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Posted by John K. Waters on October 15, 20101 comments
Microsoft has been lobbing water balloons at Google's Android mobile operating system for months now, but on Friday the Redmond software maker tossed a Molotov cocktail in the form of a lawsuit alleging infringement of nine of its patents by Motorola's Android-based smartphones. Microsoft filed in the International Trade Commission and in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.
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Posted by John K. Waters on October 4, 20105 comments
It was another hot Indian summer in the City by the Bay this week as codederos with a mobile-biz bent swarmed into San Francisco for the annual BlackBerry DevCon. And when I say "hot," I mean scorching sidewalks strewn with melted attendees caught between the San Francisco Marriott Marquis, where the sessions, labs and breakout sessions were held, and Moscone West, where the General Session and keynotes were presented. Not as bad as last week's Oracle OpenWorld-to-JavaOne slog, but with temps heading for triple digits, it was a bit tougher on those of us who are well-insulated and pigment-challenged.
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Posted by John K. Waters on September 30, 20100 comments
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison closed out the first combo Oracle OpenWorld/JavaOne event in San Francisco on Wednesday, and I have to say, it was a vintage performance. He slammed his competitors, as usual, with digs aimed at SAP, IBM, and EMC. But he seemed to relish dissing his chief CRM rival, Salesforce.com, the most, describing the company's multi-tenancy architecture as "a horrible idea" that "commingles everyone's customer list in a single database."
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Posted by John K. Waters on September 24, 20103 comments
I wasn't the only one complaining about the first JavaOne under Oracle's stewardship this week. I'll admit that my criticism of Big O's decision to hold the J1 portion of its hybrid, San Francisco-devouring, Tandem Conference Monster was probably exacerbated by my lack of cardiovascular fitness and what evolved into the hell of hauling my chubby self back and forth between Moscone and the Hilton. (I swear, I'm joining a gym tomorrow!) But other, fitter bloggers were just as cranky about this year's show.
John's boots weren't made for walkin'...
The Eclipse Foundation's Ian Skerrett was with me. In his post, "The New JavaOne; The New Java Community," Ian offers some cogent observations about J1 under Oracle. The Hilton, he says, was "the worst location for a conference I have ever experienced" (Yes!) He goes on to give Kurian credit (as just about everyone has) for a good keynote. Interesting conclusions. Also check out his "My JavaOne Wish List" post.
Sam Dean worries on the Ostatic blog post, "Oracle Still Shows Few Signs of Open Java Goals," that, "Many of [Oracle's EVP of Product Development Thomas Kurian's] points made clear that Oracle will encourage lots of development around Java, but not many of them made clear that Oracle will retain the level of openness that Sun Microsystems always had toward Java." (Editor's note: Go here and here for more on what Kurian said at the show.)
Adam Bien gives a nice little post-mortem of his travels at the event in his blog "JavaOne 10 Afterglow." He actually concludes that "Considering the circumstances JavaOne was even great this year…" (Hmm… Not nearly as grumpy as me.) But keep scrolling down to get even more conference notes.
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Posted by John K. Waters on September 24, 20103 comments