The State of Java on Leopard
Well... it appears that the current Java 1.5.0 on Leopard is not all that great. Add to this that there's not even a pre-release version of 1.6.0 available for the early-adopters to use and it makes a somewhat compelling argument to hold off on Leopard for at least a little bit until Apple releases the 1.6.0 JDK. I'm sure it's coming, Macs have been for the last several years the Java development platform. But with the fact that 1.6.0 never fully materialized for Tiger (10.4) and that it's not in Leopard (10.5) - yet, it makes those hard-core Java-types say that Apple is out of touch. After all, Windows uses the Sun-provided JDK and Apple insists on writing it's own.
But let's recall a few things folks... with Mac OS X 10.3 and JDK 1.4.2 Apple made the apps load very fast and run even faster. So much so that Sun asked to have a look under the hood to see how they did it. With each successive release of Mac OS X the bar has been raised. Unfortunately, right now, 1.5.0 is almost two releases back and 1.6.0, while not widely adopted, is widely available for a long time.
It's a matter of timing. I'm sure that within a few weeks JDK 1.6.0 will be out on Leopard and it'll be once again setting the standard for Java development platforms. There are just those that are hearing all the hype and cheering from the new release that they need to put it all in perspective - which isn't a bad thing, as long as it's not use to just knock things down.
Leopard is fine, it's new, and it's got a lot of differences, and I'm still waiting for PHP and PostgreSQL for 10.5 to be available from Marc Liyanage as they are the best packaged, fullest-featured, versions of those tools. When he's got time to update them, I'll move to Leopard. I'm guessing that by then I'll be updating to JDK 1.6.0, or soon after. It's just a matter of a few weeks. Have a little patience.
UPDATE: interesting note about Java on Leopard... is seems like the guy got a lot of press for whining about a specific application instance. In general, it's better and faster, but there may be times that you have to actually code against the defaults to get optimal speed. In any case, one less thing to worry about with Leopard.