
Apple says no Java for you, removes plugin from browsers on OS X 10.7 and up - somethingnew
http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/18/apple-removes-java-from-osx/
======
rsingel
If you care about good journalism, follow the source. This is Engadget
aggregating an Ars Technica story. That's fine -- there are good reasons for
aggregation -- but if you are going to share on social networks, take the time
to click to the original and reward the _real_ reporting -- in this case from
Dan Goodin.

[http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/10/apple-removes-java-
from...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/10/apple-removes-java-from-all-os-
x-web-browsers/)

~~~
somethingnew
Sorry bout that :)

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cjensen
They are uninstalling the Apple-provided Java browsing plugin and letting
Oracle handle the browser plugin from now on. Sounds good: why keep Java
around by default as a potential security hole now that very few sites use it?

They still provide Java for applications like CrashPlan, Minecraft, or
JungleDisk which need it.

~~~
shanelja
Don't forget Runescape, one of the biggest MMORPG's in the world, which uses
Java for it's 3D front end client, but even they will be gone soon; they're
moving to HTML5.

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ChrisBaldwin
Wow, I never thought I'd see the day when Runescape wasn't Java.

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seltzered_
I didn't know runescape still existed, I played that game 11 years ago.

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shanelja
It was really big for a while, had in excess of 200,000 players on at a time,
then poor decisions on part of the company who runs them and being bought out
by another company caused the game to be less popular than it was.

Currently it stands at about 110,000-140,000 people on at once per night,
which while being no mean number itself, consists of a large number of bots,
or computerized players, programmed to perform tasks which generate in game
money to be sold to legitimate players on external websites.

The % of bots was said at the last RuneFest to be around the 30% mark, but
since most players have used some form of botting program in the past, it is
more likely to be around 50%.

Over the years, there has been a lot of turmoil in game, from free trade and
the wilderness being removed, to it being reinstated, to the release of pay-
for-perks via the squeal of fortune, a relatively new money making venture by
JaGex, instigated by the new owners (Possibly named MMG, I can't remember off
the top of my head) whereby players can buy spins on a virtual wheel of
fortune, with prizes ranging from experience lamps, to 50 coins, to rare items
and weapons (in a form which may not be sold) all the way up to 200,000,000
coins (which admittedly is extremely rare.)

The culmination of these changes has resulted in a player backlash, whereby
the forums (and not just the 'rant' forum) are constantly filled with topics
and players complaining, wishing the game was how it used to be.

Adding to this, several staff who felt strongly about the future of the game,
also being players themselves, quit their positions at the company, including
the CEO. (There is a much longer story and this is very watered down.)

But to give a proper response: The game is still very much existential, though
internally, it is filled with anger and cheating.

~

I am in no way affiliated with JaGex, I know some of the staff use HN and I
don't want to get any of them in trouble, the new owners tend to act first and
think later.

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rsync
I switched from FreeBSD as my desktop to OSX about four years ago because:

a) I needed a unix based desktop

b) I needed end user components (browser, printing, etc.) that just worked

Circa 2008, everything in Safari "just worked" - every site, every player,
every piece of embedded bullshit on every little web 2.0 site blah blah blah.

But now I need to manually futz around with flash every two weeks to keep it
working ... and now java as well ?

I think OSX still has an edge for me, in terms of getting things done, due to
printing and ... ? It's getting awfully close to even, though.

~~~
borlak
Since I was the lone developer using windows at my workplace, I decided to
give Apple/OSX a fair shake. The fact OSX was unix based seemed awesome to me
(some of my projects are in C).

Then began the hell of trying to do anything "unixy" on OSX. Custom libraries
just for the mac (custom libev??), needing to install XCode Dev Tools to get
gcc compiler(???). Sigh.

In the end I just ended up running a CentOS VM in virtualbox, and I do my
development there. The ONLY benefit I currently gain from a Mac is creating
iOS apps.

~~~
Supreme
A thousand times this. I used OSX at one job where everyone else was too and
was appalled at how bad it is for getting work done. It's pretty and shiny but
broken by design in terms of usability. Switching windows is a pain in the ass
(different shortcuts to 'alt-tab' between windows of the same application),
maximizing a window doesn't work properly, no way to change the window
manager. Those are just my gripes with the GUI. As parent pointed out, the
best way to do *nix-based work on OSX is to run linux on a VM. This throws the
'is unix-like' argument out the window.

So a crap GUI, crippled CLI, very questionable company policies and politics
and to top it off it costs twice as much as everything else. You have to be
out of your mind to buy into this.

~~~
davidhollander
> _no way to change the window manager_

Is this actually the case? I use Linux as my primary OS, but I recall seeing
xmonad running in osx on a macbook.

~~~
hollerith
That xmonad was almost certainly managing the X11 apps while the native apps
were being managed by the standard Apple window manager.

Most Mac users (including myself) make no regular use of any X11 app.

(In fact, shortcomings in X11 and software that relies on X11 are the main
reasons I left Linux in the first place).

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nnq
...if only Java in the browser wouldn't have failed so bad (and it did long
time ago, Apple's decision is just a sad reminder of this), we would actually
have the "nirvana" of using Python (Jython), Ruby (JRuby), Clojure and more IN
THE BROWSER! Same language on the server and in the browser, even on mobile,
and the ability for every developer/team to CHOOSE that language from a few
option that run on the JVM... (I know we'll have this one day, with languages
that compile to Javascript, but... it could have so much more beautiful,
another lost "alternate reality", like the ones in which Lisp went mainstream
and even OSs were build in it... sigh...)

How dump could Sun and Oracle (I know, the browser Java fight was maybe
already lost when Oracle came in...) be not to realize the potential ecosystem
that could grow around this? Sigh...

~~~
Kerrick
Native Client is the next hope for Python, Ruby, etc. in the browser. Much
better than trying to compile an existing language to JavaScript.

<https://developers.google.com/native-client/>

~~~
nnq
Hmm... I just can't imagine either Ms or Apple being friendly towards NaCl as
it would basically be a way of drilling more wholes into their boats (like
competing with Silverlght or the broader "issue" that webifying desktop and
mobile apps would risk making iOS or Windows irrelevant and welcome in even
more low-cost Android and Linux solutions... every Desktop/iOS app to browser
app transition basically makes these guys loose money one way or another...)

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timothya
I don't expect to see much difference in my day-to-day browsing, I can barely
remember the last time I encountered a Java applet - most of the time I see
them they are some sort of unimportant and old technology demo.

However, I'm of the understanding that in Europe, a lot of bank websites use
Java applets as their primary way to do online banking, in which case I can
see this decision affecting a lot of people.

~~~
mortenjorck
Maybe after enough thousands of WebExes get delayed another 15 minutes each,
Cisco will take this as a sign.

(WebEx has a totally pointless Java applet that only serves to launch the
native client app.)

~~~
lloeki
On the IE side they do this with ActiveX. I always wondered why they did not
come up with a simple webex:// uri.

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freeslave
I wasn't too worried about this when i read it, but it appears the latest
oracle java plugin is not supported on chrome. I get this message from the
download page:

"Chrome does not support Java 7. Java 7 runs only on 64-bit browsers and
Chrome is a 32-bit browser.

If you download Java 7, you will not be able to run Java content in Chrome and
will need to use a 64-bit browser (such as Safari or Firefox) to run Java
content within a browser. Additionally, installing Java 7 will disable the
ability to use Apple Java 6 on your system."

So now it looks like I'll have to flip over to firefox if I want to use a site
that requires the java plugin - kind of a nuisance.

~~~
spullara
Chrome is only 32-bit? Apparently, yes, at least on the Mac. The issue has
been open for 3 years:

<http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=18323>

"Snow Leopard will be released in less than 2 months. I believe we should
start testing a 64bit version of Chrome so it can be ready when SL ships."

~~~
lloeki
Chrome and Dropbox are the last non-64bit process on my machine.

Their argument is YAGNI.

~~~
peeters
Not the worst argument, given that each Chrome tab is its own process.

~~~
lloeki
> Not the worst argument

It is when it's the only process requiring and loading up a slew of 32-bit
dylibs.

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kev009
Sensational; Apple planned on passing off Java to Oracle for a while. Oracle
now distributes a Java 7 JRE for OS X directly.

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zhoutong
The built-in Java was optimized for Retina display and all texts were crisp
and sharp. After the update and a manual installation of Oracle's Java
Runtime, everything is blurry again.

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veidr
Completely stupid headline; removing words 2 through 6 (and the comma) would
fix it.

~~~
woah
I rather appreciated its snarky nature.

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smackfu
I love Apple and their little "surprise, all your users will have to do
something to get your app to work today, hope you help desk is staffed!"

And Oracle is no better, making changes as "security updates" that have no
pre-release, which is fine in theory but in practice has tended to break our
app.

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jayfuerstenberg
Some online photo printing service sites use funky Java Applets to let you
upload image files by picking from thumbnails generated on the client side.

Other than that I can only see this move as a plus for internet security.

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pbreit
I can't remember the last time I used Java on the client side but I'm sure it
was hellish.

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james4k
At the risk of sounding a bit ridiculous, good for them. The less Java, the
better.

~~~
thebluesky
> The less Java, the better.

That's a pretty broad generalization. As Java+Scala programmer I personally
seldom use, see or write Java applets. Advocating against the use of Java in
general is just silly however. Java (+other JVM languages) is very well suited
to backend systems, and with the addition of modern web frameworks like Play
it's pretty good choice for frontend work too. Java (+other JVM languages) is
used heavily by companies like Google, Amazon, Twitter etc.

> At the risk of sounding a bit ridiculous

You do indeed sound ridiculous, especially since it's just Apple no longer
maintaining their own Java plugin, but letting customers install the official
plugin from Oracle, just like customers do for every other major operating
system.

~~~
notatoad
Java is a perfectly accpetable language, as long as i can't tell when an app
is using it. Server-side java is great, android is great, but as long as
shitty programmers keep writing java apps that make use of some awful GUI
toolkit and require the user to install a JRE, people are going to keep hating
java. In many cases, the fact that an app is java based can be directly blamed
for a poor user experience. sure, it's not the language's fault, but it is
what it is.

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andrewpi
Unlike the previously built-in Java, Oracle's Java plugin doesn't seem to work
with Chrome on the Mac due to Chrome being 32 bit. Anyone know a workaround?

~~~
smithian
There doesn't appear to be one other than "Use Safari"

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Groxx
Doesn't change much, since the earlier change to the OS meant you don't even
_have_ Java by default.

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whichdan
I keep Java disabled in Chrome anyway, so no complaints here.

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CodeCube
Pretty soon, this URL won't be a 404 - <http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-
on-java/>

~~~
astrange
I believe you're looking for
[http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/11/12Oracle-and-
Apple-A...](http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/11/12Oracle-and-Apple-
Announce-OpenJDK-Project-for-Mac-OS-X.html).

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svendahlstrand
How to enable Java browser plugin again:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4672511>.

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greatabel
Consider the sun sanked in the west, they should remove java long time ago.

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mariuz
Java is dead in the browser dear Google/Mozilla please remove it from chrome
and firefox also forbid it

