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In yesterday's piece, "Big Fear in MacLand", I said: "There's no Java for the Macintosh. Big fear in MacLand -- Mac Netscape 2.0 may go golden without Java support. Big fear and big anger. How did this happen? Who's screwing who?"
Marc Andreessen, marca@netscape.com, writes:
"Navigator 2.0 may well ship without Java on the Mac.
"Getting the port to run reliably and with acceptable performance has required a *lot* of work. When we started we were understaffed on the Mac (it turns out to be harder than you would think to find killer Mac programmers in the Valley, particularly if you try not to hire out of Apple), but since then we've built what I think is a really great Mac team (led by Jean-Charles Mourey, formerly of Apple) and they're hard at work on it.
"We'll ship it just as soon as we can, hopefully within the next couple of months, and we should be the first commercial Mac Java runtime product at that time.
"We're moving as fast as possible!"
Thanks Marc!
More views and a question...
For a somewhat confusing report on a sighting of Java on the Mac, check out BrowserWatch.
And Marc may not be first.
"Natural Intelligence" shipped a Java development and runtime environment for the Mac last week at MacWorld Expo. I'm really looking forward to trying it out.
Important point: Java makes sense outside the context of web browsers. We can get started now with Natural Intelligence's product. And as soon as Marc and Company provide us with a Java runtime environment we'll be up to parity with our Windows brothers and sisters.
So -- OK -- I've got Windows NT running. (The monitor is turned off tho.) What's the best Java development system for Windows? Is "Borland" shipping? How easy is "Symantec"'s product? Any others I should look at? Remember, it's been a long time since I've used a PC as a primary machine. Be kind!
Dave Winer
PS: I know I have to turn the monitor on. ;->
PPS: From David Bunnell, davbunnell@aol.com: "You must have seen the movie Amadeus. When the court music critics complain that Mozart has too many notes in his music, the emperior says to him 'There's just too many notes, that's all. Take some out and everything will be fine.'" Coooool.
PPPS: From Steve Wozniak, steve@woz.org: "I think a lot of Mac users feel the common frustration that the road to greatness was not followed, largely by Apple but not entirely. It's hard to say your computer is easier when many, if not most, users just experience an app that looks the same on both platforms."
PPPPS: From Don Hopkins, hopkins@interval.com, on the question of whether Netscape plugins work on the Mac: "Do they work? Depends on what you want to do with them. They work quite well if all you want is to make a press release and get publicity by associating your name with Netscape."