They should care because they sell hardware to people who use those platforms. They will sell less hardware to Java/Scala/Groovy/Clojure/Jython/JRuby/Beanshell programmers this way.
The Mac platform is not important enough for Oracle to care. And Java Apps won't be in the App Store.
Why isn't the Mac platform important enough for Oracle to care?
Seems to me that maybe it's big enough that Mac should be supported by Oracle. That would be a bit more ideal, get updates when all the platforms get updates.
Ugh, you just reminded me of the Java updater on windows machines. I hope that if Oracle does care, they at least care enough to get it right. And that Apple lets them still hook into Software Update.
So what other JVMs can you run on the Mac today? Will Apple open-source their JVM as a starting point for whomever wants to pick up that ball and run with it?
How do you develop for Android on a Mac when their JVM finally disappears? I understand Android uses Dalvik, but will you be able to run Eclipse to get to that point?
You can run Soylatte. Landon Fuller ported it when there was no Java6 on 32bit Intel Macs. Soylatte now is the Openjdk7 port for Macosx.
Which is all good except for desktop Apps. It was impossible to run Netbeans, Eclipse or IntelliJ IDEA on top of Soylatte which only supports X11. Server side development was great with Soylatte and most likely still is. Thanks to Landon Fuller who earned an eternal place in my personal hall of fame with this :-)
Without him I would have had to work on Linux or Windows at that time.
Your point about Android development may be the reason this move occurred. The IOS vs Android war is at full steam right now and Apple is known to be the aggressor in it thus far.
Interesting (and provocative) point, but that seems like a stretch that Apple would considering such and indirect action just to put up a roadblock for Android developers, and not a very big roadblock at that.
Apple don't really have much of an interest programmers, other than those who are developing for their platforms (OSX/iOS).
I doubt programmers make up a huge % of Mac sales either to be honest, with the success of the iPhone breaking Apple into the mainstream, I don't think it's that difficult to find casual users making the switch to a Mac
The install base of Mac is 50 million. http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/10/20/apple-cfo-tim-cook... There are about 9 million programmers in the world (heard this from Joel at BoS 2 weeks ago -- not sure if it's true, or if I am remembering correctly). If 50% of devs have a mac (way overestimate), we make up less than 10% of the users. Now ... how many of us need Java?
Java shops use Java -- that's definitely true. But, are there enough of them for Apple to care? Apple doesn't make their own Python, PHP or Perl, and I bet a lot of Python, PHP and Perl devs use macs. I do for Python.
The Mac platform is not important enough for Oracle to care. And Java Apps won't be in the App Store.