First of all, if you are one of those Apple religious guys, skip this blog because what you read know will be very hard to believe:
Let me introduce myself, i am developing in java for ages, some years ago, i used a Windows PC for that. 3 years (or something) ago, i switched to Mac. While the general usage of Mac OS X is fine, developing Java on Mac OS X is simply stupid because Windows, as well as Linux are far better when it comes to JDKs and development with Java.
The first argument is pretty clear. In the last years Apple was so slow to release ported JDK version that developers on every other platform were faster in checking out new JDKs. But thats something i lived with.... i was not happy but anyway....
But now listen: Recently i (like everyone else) upgraded to SnowLeopard. I knew it didnt offer me that much from feature perspective but anyway. This was 3 weeks ago. Now we have customers that are running our software on Java 1.5 and 1.6. Yesterday i compiled a new version (my ANT build.xml is pointing for ages to 1.5 symlink in /System/Library/.../1.5) and then i deployed this application yesterday to the customers server.
After starting up Tomcat, i realized that i am getting "Wrong version class file" indicating that the customers runtime (1.5) doesnt match my classes. Quite irritated i compiled again after checking my build.xml. Another deployment, same error. Then i checked the version bytes of my class files to double proof that its really a 1.6 compiled version and they were. Then i went into the 1.5 (symlink) directory on my mac and noted that SnowLeopard removed Java5 and pointed the 1.5 symlink to 1.6.
Thats the single scariest thing i ve ever noticed! Apple, you son of a bi****, dont you think that there are also some developers out there developing with your fucking OS ? Silently replacing a JDK, while keeping the 1.5 symlink is insane. As a developer, you dont get any feedback that something changed. You really only see it while deploying!
This conpany is so enduser driven uneblivable. But they should know that A LOT OF JAVA DEVELOPERS sitched to Mac. Check out the blogsphere and you will know. For me, this is so insulting that i am thinking of leaving that Platform and switch to Ubuntu. There are some tools i would miss (iSync, iCal, iTunes,...) but more important than those gadgets is that behind an OS are developers with some brain. I am so pissed off, hard to believe....
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