Category: Software

Mac OS X Java Apps I use

Having thought about what I actually use Java for on Mac OS X (now that Apple’s indicated it’s deprecated). Probably the main ones are

  • Eclipse (Free development environment for many languages, not just Java)
  • NeoOffice/OpenOffice (Free alternatives to Microsoft Office)
  • GanttProject, a free Gantt charting and project management app
  • FreeMind, a free mind mapping application

I guess I’ll just have to fire up Java under Windows in Parallels? I guess if I’m happy to give Google all my information I could replace my use of NeoOffice with Google Docs.

Apple deprecates Java on Mac OS X

Apple’s recently released Java for Mac OS X Update 3 includes the following information in the developer release notes:

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.

So, either Steve’s had a chat with Larry and Oracle’s going to be doing the Java build for Apple, or Apple isn’t going to have Java apps running on Mac OS X, which is going to add to the pain for educational institutions, and developers who want to write cross platform code more easily (although these days many would argue that this is possible with Javascript and HTML5 no doubt). No doubt it’s also that Java apps don’t look and feel so much like Mac Apps, which seems to be one of Steve’s reasons for ditching Flash.

BBEdit 9.5 released

Changes include:

The ponies’ saronite shoes have been reinforced with titanium, and have a buff applied which increases both ground and flight speed by 30%.

Do I get a prize for actually having read all the release notes?

Also includes more EMACs likeness, support for more AppleEvent/AppleScript notifications, now writes window metadata into extended file attributes rather than resource forks, a Search Bar (rather than the Quick Search dialog), and more changes listed on the BBEdit site. The update is free if you already have a license for BBEdit 9.0 to 9.3.

Now Software closes its doors

TidBITs reports that Now Software has closed down. Now-Up-To-Date was once the ruling calendaring application for Macs.

Sadly in later years it got known as “Now-Up-Too-Late”, usually by support staff who were trying to fix what had gone wrong for their concierge level customers who were sharing their calendars with their personal assistants.

At least in our shop the transition was thence to PeopleCube’s Meeting Maker, and now to the evil Entourage (which still doesn’t sync shared events properly with iCal for some reason, no handle shared calendars properly, despite Snow Leopard’s claimed compatibility).

iTablet iPhone iThingy roundup

Aside from the usual random speculation about Steve Jobs worldchanging release in a few hours time, there have been a few interesting articles recently, namely

I also wonder what the cool feature will be… Mesh networking? Biofeedback? Merging with other nearby devices to form a larger device? Inbuilt projector?
It will also be interesting to see if Apple launches any updates to their 17 inch MacBook Pro as they would probably always have done if they were attending MacWorld this year. Also, I predict an iPhone software update, an iTunes update and a Mac OS X update.
Now, lets sit back and see how wrong we all are…

App store hits 2 billionth download.

Apple has announced that the 2 billionth application has been downloaded from the App Store.

The second billion only took 5 months. The store has 85,000 apps and 125,000 developers, with more than 50 million iPhones and iPod Touches sold in 77 countries.

Graphs of downloads and Apps on the store:

Graph of Apps on App Store
Graph of Apps on App Store
Graph of App Store Downloads
Graph of App Store Downloads

Getting Parallels 4.03844.408728 working under Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

If you can’t get your copy of Parallels 4 working under Snow Leopard because it quits on launch you could try dropping into the Terminal and then doing

cd /usr/local/lib
sudo ln -s /Library/Parallels/Parallels Service.app/Contents/Frameworks/ParallelsVirtualizationSDK.framework/Versions/3.0/Libraries/libprl_sdk.dylib .

Worked for me!