Tell them, my song.

With the latest update to their Java runtime, Apple announced that their implementation of the runtime is now deprecated, which means that developers should no longer use it.

I think that Apple dropped the support for Java for the very same reason that it no longer wants Flash on its devices: Both Java and Flash are portable platforms, making an application independent from the underlying operating system. When you write software for Flash or Java, that software will also run on non-Apple systems. And Apple simply does not want that – they want to lock-in the developers to their proprietary OS X and iOS platforms (which is why Apple made it a rule that Java apps are not allowed in the Mac AppStore). End of discussion.

By removing the Java support, Apple is adding another wall to its Walled Garden. And it won’t end here. My bet is that Lion will be the last incarnation of Mac OS X where you can freely install applications without having to go through the freshly announced Mac AppStore. And at the same time, more and more of the functionality of Apple’s platforms will move to Apple’s online services, making the user even more dependent on Apple.

And this is where I sign off from Apple’s software land. They built nice hardware, and as long as that hardware can run other operating systems, there is nothing wrong with using it. But OS X? I think now is the time to cut the losses and move on – out of Apple’s digital prison.

And no, Microsoft and their Windows platform are not the answer – they’re the very same problem, they’re only wearing a suit instead of a turtleneck. But underneath that superficial difference is the same bloodsucker that wants to exploit its consumer cattle to the last drop of their blood.

Edit:

I’m still using OS X as my main private platform. Unfortunately, it’s still the platform with the best software for MY personal needs out there. So, yes, I’m weak and let Apple and Steve Jobs repeatedly do their thing to me.

As for Java apps not being allowed to the AppStore, well, the author of CyberDuck has found a very obvious solution for that problem as it seems and CyberDuck, the pin-up girl of Java apps for the Mac, is available in Apple’s AppStore. Apparently, statically linking the OpenJDK runtime to the program does the trick.

But it’s interesting to see that I was right about the functionality that moves to Apple’s online services: That is exactly what the freshly announced iCloud will do. Well, I admit that it didn’t take the mind of genius to count two and two together, all the clues were out there, so the whole iCloud announcement should not have surprised anybody.

This was supposed to be a response to James Gosling’s blog post “Desktop Linux: The dream is dead”. However, is blog software is very restrictive about the length of comments, so I simply post it here on my home turf.

It doesn’t really matter whether the dream of Desktop Linux is dead or not: The desktop itself is on the edge of extinction. The future of computing lies in mobility and in being connected to the Internet at all times and in all places, with your data somewhere in this magical cloud all marketing departments are currently so hysterical about. It doesn’t matter where you are, your entire digital life will always be with you. In theory. Or until your service provider goes bankrupt. Something like that.

But one thing is certain: Amazon, Google, Apple and all the other companies with large datacenters and strong cloud offerings are going to own this market. By 2015, thanks to LTE and other UMTS/3G successors, bandwidth won’t be an issue anymore. Storage capacity won’t be an issue. Computing power in data centers has stopped being an issue years ago. And the cloud will bring it all to the phone in your pocket – or to the glasses on your nose or the hearing aid in your ear.
What will anybody be needing a traditional desktop for in a cloud-oriented world? To run Photoshop? And how many dozen people will actually still be needing such a desktop system? The desktop will sink into a mere niche existence, the masses will be using iPhone/iPad-like gadgets, soon even wearables, and Apple and Google are betting their companies on this vision of the future.

I remember the time when SUN had a vision of boxes that would always be connected to a network. Maybe it wasn’t really a vision but more of an inkling, because it was way too early, desktop-oriented and there wasn’t much of an Internet back in the day. In short, those Java-powered boxes that SUN tried to sell as network-centric desktops were a huge failure. Nobody wanted them, maybe because they were desktops, maybe because bandwidth was a major issue, maybe because there was no (useful) content for them available. Maybe they failed because when people see a box on their desk, they want it to be a real computer, and not just some version of a terminal.

Today we already have the Internet in our pockets – and our pockets are not really an ideal place for a desktop system, so I predict that large desktop systems as we know them are soon going to join the dinosaurs in their eternal hunting grounds.

Our entire planet will become one huge network and storage facility.

And for those who think this is science-fiction: Try to describe to the inventor of the first computers that today we have infinitely more storage capacity and computing power in a pocket calculator than they had in an entire factory hall. An average smart phone has more processing power than NASA could put in the Apollo 11 capsule. Look at what your Android- or iOS-based devices already can do today and I think the trend is obvious.