Category Archives: software development

adobe, development, flash, microsoft, open source, professional, silverlight, software, software development, web authoring

Adobe MAX 2010 – it’s all about the partners

Last week was all conferences – Adobe MAX 2010 followed by Microsoft PDC – which left me with plenty of input but too little time to write it up. It is not too late though; and one advantage of attending these two events back-to-back was to highlight the tale of two runtimes, Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight. MAX was a good event for Flash, and PDC a bad one for Silverlight, though the tale has a long way yet to run.

The key difference at this point is not technical, but all about partners. At MAX we saw how the Flash runtime is integral to the Blackberry PlayBook, with RIM founder Mike Lazaridis coming on stage to tell us so. Flash is also built into Google TV, and Andres Ferrate and Daniels Lee from Google Developer Relations presented a session on creating web apps for the platform – worth watching as it brings out the difference between developing for a TV “lean back” environment and traditional mouse or touch user interfaces -  and we also heard from Samsung about its Flash-enabled TVs coming in 2011. In each case, it is not just Flash but AIR, for applications that run outside the browser, which is supported. Google TV runs Android; and AIR for Android in general drew attention at MAX, encouraged by free Motorola Droid 2 smartphones handed out to attendees.

If the task was to convince Flash developers – and those on the fence – that the platform has a future, MAX delivered in spades; and Adobe can only benefit from the uncertainty surrounding the most obvious runtime rivals to Flash, Java and Silverlight.

But what about that other platform, HTML? Well, Adobe made a bit of noise about projects like EDGE, which exports animations and transitions to SVG and JavaScript using an extended JQuery library, as well as showing a “sneak peek” of a tool to export a Flash animation (but not application) to  HTML. Outside the Adobe fan club there is still considerable aversion to Flash, stoked by Apple; in one of the sessions at MAX we were told that Steve Jobs’ open memo Thoughts on Flash has done real damage.

My impression though is that Adobe still has a Flash-first philosophy. The Solution Accelerators announced for LiveCycle 2.5, for example, all seem to be based on Flash clients, which could prove difficult if Apple’s iPad continues to take off in the enterprise. Adobe could do more to provide JavaScript libraries for LiveCycle clients, and tools for creating HTML applications. If you came to MAX looking for evidence that Adobe is moving towards web standard HTML clients, you would have been largely disappointed; though seeing JQuery guy John Resig in the day two keynote would give you some comfort.

Some other MAX highlights:

  • Round-tripping between Catalyst and Flash Builder at last. This makes Catalyst more useful, though I still find myself thinking that the Catalyst features could be rolled into one of the other products, either as a designer personality for Flash Builder, or maybe in Flash Professional. The former would be easier as both Catalyst and Flash Builder are built on Eclipse.
  • Enhancements in the Flash Player – I am writing a separate piece on this, but it is great to see the 3D extensions codenamed Molehill, which together with game controller support lay the foundations for Flash games that compete more closely with console games.
  • Analytics – Adobe’s acquisition of Omniture a year ago was a far-sighted move, and the company talked about analytics in the context of applications as well as web sites. Despite unsettling privacy implications, the ability for developers to drill down into exactly how an application is used, and which parts are hardly used, has great potential for improving usability.
  • Digital publishing – it was fascinating to hear from publisher Condé Nast about its plans for digital publishing, using Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite to create files targeting Adobe’s content viewer on iOS and eventually AIR. As a web enthusiast I have mixed feelings, and there was some foot-shuffling when I asked about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation); but as someone with a professional interest in a flourishing media industry I also hope this becomes a solid and profitable platform.

Disappointments? I was sorry to hear that Adobe is closing down contributions and reducing transparency in the open source Flex SDK, though it is said to be temporary. It also seems that plans to enhance ActionScript are not well advanced; Silverlight remains well ahead in this respect with its C# and .NET support.

What about Adobe’s enterprise ambitions? Klint Finley’s post on the Adobe Stack and what it means for Enterprise Development is a good read. The pieces are almost in place, but the focus on document processing at the back end, and Flash and Acrobat on the front end, makes this a specialist rather than a generic application platform.

Overall though it was a strong MAX. I appreciate Adobe for not being Google or Apple or Microsoft or IBM, and hope that takeover rumours remain as rumours.

See also my earlier post Adobe aims to fill mobile vacuum with AIR.

.net, adobe, flash, multimedia, professional, silverlight, software development, web authoring

Microsoft pledges commitment to Silverlight – but is it enough?

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Microsoft’s president of Server and Tools Bob Muglia has posted a response to the widespread perception that the company is backing off its commitment to Silverlight, a cross-browser, cross-platform runtime for rich internet applications. He is the right person to do so, since it was his remark that ”Our strategy with Silverlight has shifted” which seemed to confirm a strategy change that had already been implied by the strong focus in the keynote on HTML 5 as an application platform.

Muglia says Silverlight is in fact “very important and strategic to Microsoft”. He confirms that a new release is in development, notes that Silverlight is the development platform for Windows Phone 7, and affirms Silverlight both as a media client and as “the richest way to build web-delivered client apps.”

So what is the strategy change? It is this:

When we started Silverlight, the number of unique/different Internet-connected devices in the world was relatively small, and our goal was to provide the most consistent, richest experience across those devices.  But the world has changed.  As a result, getting a single runtime implementation installed on every potential device is practically impossible.  We think HTML will provide the broadest, cross-platform reach across all these devices.  At Microsoft, we’re committed to building the world’s best implementation of HTML 5 for devices running Windows, and at the PDC, we showed the great progress we’re making on this with IE 9.

The key problem here is Apple’s iOS, which Muglia mentioned specifically in his earlier interview:

HTML is the only true cross platform solution for everything, including (Apple’s) iOS platform.

Muglia’s words are somewhat reassuring to Silverlight developers; but not, I think, all that much. Silverlight will continue on Windows, Mac and on Windows Phone; but there are many more devices which developers want to target, and it sounds as if Microsoft does not intend to broaden Silverlight’s reach.

Faced with the same issues, Adobe has brought Flash to device platforms including Android, MeeGo, Blackberry and Google TV; and come up with a packager that compiles Flash applications to native iOS code. There is still no Flash or AIR (out of browser Flash) on Apple iOS; but Adobe has done all possible to make Flash a broad cross-platform runtime.

Microsoft by contrast has not really entered the fight. It has been left to Novell’s Mono team to show what can be done with cross-platform .NET, including MonoTouch for iOS and MonoDroid for Google’s Android platform.

Microsoft could have done more to bring Silverlight to further platforms, but has chosen instead to focus on HTML 5 – just as Muglia said in his earlier interview.

Whether Microsoft is right or wrong in this is a matter for debate. From what I have seen, the  comments on Microsoft’s de-emphasis of Silverlight at PDC have been worrying for .NET developers, but mostly cheered elsewhere.

The problem is that HTML 5 is not ready, nor is it capable of everything that can be done in Silverlight or Flash. There is a gap to be filled; and it looks as if Microsoft is leaving that task to Adobe.

It does seem to me inevitable that if Microsoft really gets behind HTML 5, by supporting it with tools and libraries to make it a strong and productive client for Microsoft’s server applications, then Silverlight will slip further behind.

adobe, flash, microsoft, silverlight, software development, Web, web authoring, windows

Microsoft’s Silverlight dream is over

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Remember “WPF Everywhere”? Microsoft’s strategy was to create a small cross-platform runtime that would run .NET applications on every popular platform, as well as forming a powerful multimedia player. Initially just a browser plug-in, Silverlight 3 and 4 took it to the next level, supporting out of browser applications that integrate with the desktop.

The pace of Silverlight development was unusually fast, from version 1.0 in 2007 to version 4.0 in April 2010, and Microsoft bragged about how many developer requests it satisfied with the latest version.

Silverlight has many strong features, performs well, and to me is the lightweight .NET client Microsoft should have done much earlier. That said, there have always been holes in the Silverlight story. One is Linux support, where Microsoft partnered with Novell’s open source Mono project but without conviction. More important, device support has been lacking. Silverlight never appeared for Windows Mobile; there is a Symbian port that nobody talks about; a version for Intel’s Moblin/Meego was promised but has gone quiet – though it may yet turn up – and there is no sign of a port for Android. Silverlight is no more welcome on Apple’s iOS (iPhone and iPad), of course, than Adobe’s Flash; but whereas Adobe has fought hard to get Flash content onto iOS one way or another, such as through its native code packager, Microsoft has shown no sign of even trying.

In the early days of Silverlight, simply supporting Windows and Mac accounted for most of what people wanted from a cross-platform client. That is no longer the case.

Further, despite a few isolated wins, Silverlight has done nothing to dent the position of Adobe Flash as a cross-platform multimedia and now application runtime. Silverlight has advantages, such as the ability to code in C# rather than ActionScript, but the Flash runtime has the reach and the partners. At the recent MAX conference RIM talked up Flash on the Blackberry tablet, the Playbook, and Google talked up Flash on Google TV. I have not heard similar partner announcements for Silverlight.

Why has not Microsoft done more to support Silverlight? It does look as if reports of internal factions were correct. Why continue the uphill struggle with Silverlight, when a fast HTML 5 browser, in the form of IE9, meets many of the same needs and will work across the Apple and Google platforms without needing a non-standard runtime?

Here at PDC Microsoft has been conspicuously quiet about Silverlight, other than in the context of Windows Phone 7 development. IE9 man Dean Hachamovitch remarked that “accelerating only pieces of the browser holds back the web”, and last night Microsoft watcher Mary-Jo Foley got Server and Tools president Bob Muglia to admit that “our strategy has shifted” away from Silverlight and towards HTML 5 as the cross-platform client runtime, noting that this was a route to running on Apple’s mobile devices.

The Silverlight cross-platform dream is over, it seems, but let me add that Silverlight, like Microsoft itself, is not dead yet. Microsoft is proud of its virtual PDC streaming application, which is built in Silverlight. The new portal for Windows Azure development and management is Silverlight. The forthcoming Visual Studio Lightswitch generates Silverlight apps. And to repeat, Silverlight is the development platform for Windows Phone 7, about which we have heard a lot at PDC.

Let’s not forget that IE9 is still a preview, and HTML 5 is not a realistic cross-platform application runtime yet, if you need broad reach.

Muglia’s remarks, along with others here at PDC, are still significant. They suggest that Microsoft’s investment in Silverlight is now slowing. Further, if Microsoft itself is downplaying Silverlight’s role, it will tend to push developers towards Adobe Flash. Alternatively, if developers do migrate towards HTML 5, they will not necessarily focus on IE9. Browsers like Google Chrome are available now, and will probably stay ahead of IE in respect of HTML 5 support.

I hope these latest reports will trigger further clarification of Microsoft’s plans for Silverlight. I’d also guess that if Windows Phone 7 is a big success, then Silverlight on the Web will also get a boost – though judging from the early days in the UK, the new phone is making a quiet start.

Finally, if Microsoft is really betting on HTML 5, expect news on tools and libraries to support this new enthusiasm – maybe at the Mix conference scheduled for April 2011.

azure, cloud computing, microsoft, software development, windows

AppFabric – Microsoft’s new middleware

I took the opportunity here at Microsoft PDC to find out what Microsoft means by AppFabric. Is it a product? a brand? a platform?

The explanation I was given is that AppFabric is Microsoft’s middleware brand. You will normally see the work in conjunction with something more specific, as in “AppFabric Caching” (once known as Project Velocity) or “AppFabric Composition Runtime” (once known as Project Dublin. The chart below was shown at a PDC AppFabric session:

image

Of course if you add in the Windows Azure prefix you get a typical Microsoft mouthful such as “Windows Azure AppFabric Access Control Service.”

Various AppFabric pieces run on Microsoft’s on-premise servers, though the emphasis here at PDC is on AppFabric as part of the Windows Azure cloud platform. On the AppFabric stand in the PDC exhibition room, I was told that AppFabric in Azure is now likely to get new features ahead of the on-premise versions. The interesting reflection is that cloud customers may be getting a stronger and more up-to-date platform than those on traditional on-premise servers.

adobe, azure, cloud computing, flash, java, microsoft, professional, silverlight, software development, Web

Microsoft PDC big on Azure, quiet on Silverlight

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I’m at Microsoft PDC in Seattle. The keynote, introduced by CEO Steve Ballmer, started with a recap of the company’s success with Windows 7 – 240 million sold, we were told, and adoption plans among 88% of businesses – and showing off Windows Phone 7 (all attendees will receive a device) and Internet Explorer 9.

IE9 guy Dean Hachamovitch demonstrated the new browser’s hardware acceleration, and made an intriguing comment. When highlighting IE9’s embrace of web standards, he noted that “accelerating only pieces of the browser holds back the web.” It sounded like a jab at plug-ins, but what about Microsoft’s own plug-in, Silverlight? A good question. You could put this together with Ballmer’s comment that “We’ve tried to make web the feel more like native applications” as evidence that Microsoft sees HTML 5 rather than Silverlight as its primary web application platform.

Then again you can argue that it just happens Microsoft had nothing to say about Silverlight, other than in the context of Windows Phone 7 development, and that its turn will come. The new Azure portal is actually built in Silverlight.

The messaging is tricky, and I found it intriguing, especially coming after the Adobe MAX conference where there were public sessions on Flash vs HTML and a focus in the day two keynote emphasising the importance of both. All of which shows that Adobe has a tricky messaging problem as well; but it is at least addressing it, whereas Microsoft so far is not.

The keynote moved on to Windows Azure, and this is where the real news was centered. Bob Muglia, president of the Server and Tools business, gave a host of announcements on the subject. Azure is getting a Virtual Machine role, which will allow you to upload server images to run on Microsoft’s cloud platform, and to create new virtual machines with full control over how they are configured. Server 2008 R2 is the only supported OS initially, but Server 2003 will follow.

Remote Desktop is also coming to Azure, which will mean instant familiarity for Windows admins and developers.

Another key announcement was Windows Azure Marketplace, where third parties will be able to sell “building block components training, services, and finished services and applications.” This includes DataMarket, the new name for the Dallas project, which is for delivering live data as a service using the odata protocol. An odata library has been added to the Windows Phone 7 SDK, making the two a natural fit.

Microsoft is also migrating Team Foundation Server (TFS) to Azure, interesting both as a case study in moving a complex application, and as a future option for development teams who would rather not wrestle with the complexities of deploying this product.

Next came Windows Azure AppFabric Access Control, which despite its boring name has huge potential. This is about federated identity – both with Active Directory and other identity services. In the example we saw, Facebook was used as an identity provider alongside Microsoft’s own Active Directory, and users got different access rights according to the login they used.

In another guide Azure AppFabric – among the most confusing Microsoft product names ever – is a platform for hosting composite workflow applications.

Java support is improving and Microsoft says that you will be able to run the Java environment of your choice from 2011.

Finally, there is a new “Extra small” option for Azure instances, aimed at developers, priced at $0.05 per compute hour. This is meant to make the platform more affordable for small developers, though if you calculate the cost over a year it still amounts to over $400; not too much perhaps, but still significant.

Attendees were left in no doubt about Microsoft’s commitment to Azure. As for Silverlight, watch this space.

microsoft, professional, silverlight, software development

Lessons from Evernote’s flight from .NET

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Evernote has released version 4.0 of its excellent note-taking product. Software developers have taken particular interest in the blog post announcing its release, because of what it says about .NET, in this case the Windows Presentation Foundation, versus native code:

Evernote 4 is a major departure from Evernote 3.5 in every way. While 3.5 added tons of great new features, there were some problems we simply couldn’t fix: the blurry fonts, slow startup times, large memory footprint, and poor support for certain graphics cards were all issues that the technology behind 3.5 (Windows .net and WPF) was incapable of resolving. As a result, we ended up chasing down platform bugs rather than adding the great features our users wanted.

So we decided to start over from scratch, with fast, native C++ that we knew we could rely on. As you’ll see, the results are amazing. This new version will set a foundation for rapid improvement.

Evernote 4 is designed to give you a great experience on any computer that you use, whether you’re on a netbook, a five year old Windows XP machine or a super fast top-of-the-line Windows 7 computer.

On our test hardware, Evernote 4 starts five times faster, and uses half the memory of Evernote 3.5.

A bit of background. WPF was introduced in Windows Vista and was originally intended to be the main GUI API for Windows, until the notorious reset midway through the Vista development cycle which marked a retreat from managed code back to native code in the operating system. I’d guess that the issues faced by the Evernote team were not so different from those faced back then by the Windows team at Microsoft.

WPF is not only based on .NET. It also uses DirectX and hardware acceleration under the covers, enabling rich multimedia effects. The layout language of WPF is XAML, giving freedom from scaling issues which cause hassles in the native API.

So what are the lessons here? Is WPF no good?

It is not so simple. WPF is brilliant in many ways, offering the productivity of .NET coding and a powerful layout framework. However it was a technology which Microsoft itself hardly used in its key products, Windows and Office – a warning sign.

When Microsoft built Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0, the development team used WPF for the Visual Studio shell. This move by an internal team to create such a complex product in WPF was good for the framework itself. The font issue was addressed, performance improved. Evernote might not have found all its issues fixed in version 4.0, but it would likely have been better.

After I tweeted about Evernote’s experience, a couple of Microsoft folk contacted me to make this point. The trouble is, even version 3.5 of WPF was not the first version, and it never sounds altogether convincing if, when a customer complains about your product, you tell them everything is fine in the latest and greatest build. Why did Microsoft not get this right before?

That said, I am sure the latest WPF is better than before, though it is still heavyweight relative to native code. Factors that might suggest a WPF solution include:

  • The application only needs to run on Windows
  • There is no need to support older machines
  • The application makes use of data visualisation or other multimedia effects
  • The development team lacks the resources to build equivalent functionality in native code

The last point is important. Maybe a hotshot team of C/C++ developers could make a better job, but if you don’t have such a team or the money to hire it, it is not so relevant.

There is another possible approach, without abandoning .NET. Silverlight has many of the features of WPF, is lightweight, and runs on the Mac as well as Windows.

adobe, flash, gaming, professional, software development

Flash to get 3D acceleration with “Molehill”

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One of the demos here at Adobe Max was a 3D racing game, running in Flash with 3D acceleration. It was enabled by a new set of GPU-accelerated APIs codenamed Molehill. Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch remarked that with GPU-accelerated 3D, Flash games could come closer to console games in the experience they offer. Lynch also demonstrated using a game controller with a Flash game.

There are no precise dates for availability, but Adobe expects to offer a public beta in the first half of 2011. The APIs will be available in a future version of the Flash Player. Under the covers, the 3D APIs will user DirectX 9 on Windows and OpenGL 1.3 on MacOS and Linux. If no supported 3D API is found on a particular platform, Flash will fall back to software rendering.

One interesting aspect is that Molehill will also work on mobile devices, where it will use OpenGL ES 2.0. Apparently GPUs will be common on mobile devices because they enable longer battery life than relying on the CPU for all processing. I heard similar remarks at the NVIDIA GPU conference last month.

This will be a significant development, especially when put in the context of Flash appearing in the living room, built into a TV or on Google TV.

adobe, mobile, professional, software development, web authoring

Adobe aims to fill mobile vacuum with AIR

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Today is day one of the Adobe MAX conference in Los Angeles. In this morning’s keynote CTO Kevin Lynch focused firmly on devices – both mobile devices and living room devices including Google TV. There was a nod to HTML 5 in the opening demo, a prototype of a new product called Edge which is a motion designer that extends JQuery, but the Flash player remains the heart of Adobe’s platform. The proliferation of incompatible devices is an opportunity for cross-platform runtimes, and Adobe intends to take advantage with Flash and AIR – the Adobe Integrated Runtime, for local applications that fun on Flash.

Released today in public preview, the Flex “Hero” SDK includes support for mobile development, among other things, and is backed by an updated Flash Builder code-named Burrito.

Right now the only mobile platform which is supported is Google Android, but others are promised. In particular, we heard a lot in the keynote about the Blackberry Playbook,  the forthcoming tablet from RIM, including an appearance from RIM boss Mike Lazaridis.

An interesting aspect of the Playbook is that the user interface of the device itself is built in part with AIR. As a RIM exec observed in a later Q&A, it makes sense for the OS to use the same framework as that used by third party apps, so that any issues are sorted early.

AIR popped up again in a a different context, as Lynch described Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite. This suite targets magazine publishers creating publications for the Apple iPad, such as publisher Condé Nast, also represented at the keynote, which is adopting the platform for many of its publications from Wired to the New Yorker.

The Digital Publishing Suite exports publications from Adobe InDesign to a dedicated format with a .issue extension, played on the iPad by Adobe Content Viewer. Adobe will now implement the content viewer on AIR, so that digital publications will render on the new wave of Android tablets, Blackberry tablets, and others in future.

Also worth noting is that Adobe plans to insert itself into the distribution process beyond just providing the authoring tools and the runtime. The Digital Publishing Suite includes Adobe hosting for the content. More broadly, the Melrose project, now called Adobe InMarket, is a service where you host your application on Adobe’s servers and Adobe handles deployment to the various App Stores out there as well as credit card processing.

Of course Apple is working, it seems, to undermine Flash. The runtime is not allowed on iOS, Apple’s mobile platform. Apple is not including Flash by default in the latest Macs, and the forthcoming Mac App Store will not allow AIR (or for that matter Java) applications. You will still be able to install Flash and AIR on a Mac, but Apple will no doubt be encouraging users to go the App Store route.

It is a fascinating tension, particularly since Apple’s devices fit so well with other aspects of Adobe’s strategy.

Despite Steve Jobs, Lynch announced today that the number of Flash platform developers has grown by 50% over the last year, which is huge. I also wonder whether the Java turmoil, especially on the Mac, could work in Adobe’s favour as it builds support for its Flash runtime.

google, java, microsoft, professional, software development, visual studio

Microsoft lets go of IronPython and IronRuby

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Visual Studio corporate VP Jason Zander has announced that IronPython and IronRuby, .NET implementations of popular dynamic languages, are to be handed over to the open source community. This includes add-ons that enable development in Visual Studio, IronPython Tools and IronRuby Tools. Of the two, IronPython is a more mature and usable project.

Why? Here’s a few reflections. For what it must cost Microsoft to maintain these projects, versus the goodwill it earns in the open source world, I would have thought they represent good value and I am surprised to see them abandoned.

On the other hand, it is easy to see that they are not commercial propositions. I’d guess that they were more valuable a few years back, before C# acquired dynamic features, and when dynamic languages were strongly in vogue and Microsoft was keen not to allow .NET to fall behind. To some extent dynamic languages are still in vogue, but we are now well past what is “the peak of inflated expectations” in the Gartner Hype Cycle, and few are likely to abandon .NET because it does not have an official Python or Ruby.

The other reason they are not commercial propositions is that Microsoft has under-invested in them. I recall Martin Fowler at ThoughtWorks telling me that JRuby, an implementation of Ruby for the Java Virtual Machine, is important to their work; it lets them work in a highly productive language, while giving clients the reassurance of running on a trusted and mature platform. JRuby performs very well, but IronRuby is a long way behind. Perhaps if Microsoft had really got behind them, one or both of these language could be equally significant in the .NET world.

The fact that F# rather than IronRuby or IronPython turned up as a fully supported language in Visual Studio 2010 is also significant. After talking to F# leader Don Syme – see the interview here – I understood how F# was important to some of Microsoft’s key customers in the financial world; and I’m guessing that neither Python nor Ruby had that kind of case made for them within the company.

Although it is a shame that Microsoft is withdrawing official support, the clarity of Zander’s statement is better than leaving the projects in limbo. The folk appointed as project leaders are also very capable – Mono guru Miguel de Icaza is on both teams and a great motivator, though it seems unlikely he will have much time to devote to them given his other commitments – and this may actually be good rather than bad news for the projects themselves.

Jim Hugunin, creator of both Jython (Python for Java) and IronPython, is leaving Microsoft for Google, and his farewell is worth a read. He says C# has evolved into a nicer language than Java, but notes:

I like to have a healthy relationship with Open Source code and communities, and I believe that the future lies in the cloud and the web. These things are all possible to do at Microsoft and IronPython is a testament to that. However, making that happen at Microsoft always felt like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole – which can be done but only at major cost to both the peg and the hole.

apple, itunes, java, professional, software, software development

Apple deprecates Java

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Apple has deprecated the version of Java that it ports and maintains for OS X:

As of the release of Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 3, the version of Java that is ported by Apple, and that ships with Mac OS X, is deprecated.

This means that the Apple-produced runtime will not be maintained at the same level, and may be removed from future versions of Mac OS X. The Java runtime shipping in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, will continue to be supported and maintained through the standard support cycles of those products.

This is not altogether a bad thing for Java. Waiting for Apple to update its official version has been a frustration for Java developers on the Mac. If Oracle now takes responsibility for delivering the JVM for OS X, it may keep in step.

Unfortunately there is not currently an Oracle JVM for OS X. Nor does the open source Apache Harmony support it. In the light of Apple’s announcement I imagine both may address this lack; though a further complication is that IBM has recently abandoned Harmony in favour of the Open JDK.

Further, in making this statement Apple is further discouraging use of Java application on OS X. This announcement should be put together with this one, in the new developer agreement for apps submitted to the forthcoming Mac App Store, a desktop version of the iOS App Store:

3.3.1    Applications may only use public APIs and frameworks included in the default installation of Mac OS X or as bundled with Xcode as provided by Apple, deprecated technologies (such as Java) may not be used.

I doubt Apple will ever attempt to lock down desktop OS X, iPad-style. But I think we will see strong encouragement from Apple steering users towards App Store installs. There will be hints that it is safer and better, the true Mac way to get apps onto your machine.

Remember the early days of Java? One of the reasons it won support was that it reduced the industry’s dependence on a single vendor and its operating system.

Plenty to think about as Apple increases its market share.

[Updated to clarify non-availability of alternative JVMs for OS X]