OK Apple has stopped since long to support for Java on Mac OS 9. Mac OS X is fully mature now, and most Mac OS 9 users that have the first PowerPC blue boxes should have no problem to upgrade, given the huge performance benefit and the decreased price of memory upgrades.
I just wonder if Apple has made a "light" version of Mac OS X which can be installed without the lots of supplementary stuffs.
What I don't understand is why Apple has not placed its port of Java on Mac OS 9 as an open-source project.
I know that porting the Java 2 platform, notably the exception handling and multithreading support is quite tricky on Mac OS 9 with its partial support for virtual memory, and its single flat memory map. However the open-sourcers could have ported a better multithreading engine on Mac OS 9, patched the 100% pure Java core classes to run in a degraded Java environment.
The main problem in Mac OS 9 is the slow virtual memory management (and absence of security caused by the flat memory model which looks more like Windows 3).
Aren't there replacement for Java 1.1.8 on Mac OS 9, for example in Apache or Mozilla hosted projects ? Is it completely impossible to support at least the Java 1.3.1 VM on Mac OS 9? |