The “Break it Down” Blog

JavaLobby has the scoop on Apple finally releasing Preview 8 of Java 6 for Intel-Mac Leopard machines only. Turns out the new preview requires 64-bit machines and the hardware to support it for an “optimized experience”.

An interesting point that Geertjan made in his post is: do people really care?

Landon Fuller has already created both a 32-bit and 64-bit port of Java 6 for the Mac platform called SoyLatte and promises a Java 7 port in parallel with Sun’s release. All the while Mac fans will be standing around with their hands in their pockets waiting for Apple to do a Java 7 release 2 years after it’s out most likely.

I am personally curious how Landon handled the issue of Look and Feel for the Mac with his port. I know one of the big reasons Apple took control of Java from Sun on the Mac was to handle the intricacies of the Swing UI on the Mac. I did notice on the Contributing section of the page, integration of Quaqua is on the TODO:

Quaqua is the beautiful Quaqua LNF for Java apps on Mac that focuses hard on following the specific Mac UI design guidelines. I send a personal thanks to Landon and the FreeBSD team for tackling this effort and hopefully bringing work forward that will be better than what Apple is currently putting out.