Part of my development efforts in the past few months has been based on Java and since MacOS X is the operating system of choice for me I usually use it for Java development.

On the C/C++ and of course Objective-C front, MacOS X is doing alright, despite the largely obsolete development tools involved. It has, not only due to Apple’s engineering efforts, a top-notch (albeit not the fastest one) compiler, gcc, a good debugger, gdb and an excellent RAD API, Cocoa. So, on this front I have no reason to ditch OS X and choose another platform for my development. OS X is as great as an OS a developer could ask. And with the advent of XCode, things can just get better — although maybe not as good as they could.

On the Java front, however, things are less rosy than this. Sun does not officially support Java on the OS X platform. Instead, due to a (very good!) relationship between the two companies, Apple gets to optimise Sun’s JVM for OS X usually releasing a J2SDK/JRE some months late. This is not just Apple’s fault. Apple shipped Web Start in 10.1, it also included support for Cocoa development in its development tools. Apple supported Java from the first moment, when Microsoft dropped support whatsoever in Windows XP. Apple is definitely trying.
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