From Apple's point of view, the real problem with Java is its open-ness. Apple is totally into closed systems, proprietary everything. Haven't you noticed how awful Apple's developer support has become? They're closing down OS X. It's hard to write a competitive app there: did you now that OS X has piles of secret APIs that are only available to Apple's applications? Everything Apple says about Java is FUD: they (Steve) hate it's open-ness and cross platform nature. The wonderful thing about AJAX (from their point of view) is that on the one hand it gives them a story that is plausible to the press (reporters are not engineers!), but at the same time, it's totally useless for building compelling applications - expecially on the wretchedly slow EDGE network.

Your blind devotion to Apple makes your criticism of Sun for not being on the Iphone laughable. Apple is to blame for not letting ANY external code to run on the device. Same with OSX requiring an upgrade ($100) just to run the latest Java- and months later than everyone else at that.

The enemy here is Apple, not SUN.

Apple has always had draconian restrictions like this. Want to put OSX on a box you build yourself? Cant. Want to run OSX in a VM? Cant. Want to run any software at all on your Iphone? Cant.

Apple users like to think that by using apple they are standing up the "The Man" (Microsoft, et al). In reality they are just bending over for a different man. I use Linux because I value freedom, but anyone can tell that even Microsoft is a much more free platform than Apple.

So what? What exactly should Sun do?? Send some flunkies over to Steve Job's house and break his knee caps?? Just because *you* wanted something to happen doesn't mean it is what was best for the iPhone or for Apple.

Good article. It made me think about a comment Steve Jobs said that was plastered all over this site a while back about why would anyone want to use Java for application development anymore (not a direct quote, but you get my gist)? IMHO, Java needs to do something to become competitive with more simplified development languages. I like Java, but I hate the hoops you have to jump through to make it work on the web. I am a long time ColdFusion guy, but I do work with JEE regularly and believe me when I say CF gives me enough power (though not as much as Java) with fewer things I have to worry about. Don't get me wrong Java is still good and still has a place in the development world, but for web development, I can think of a several scripting languages (CF, PHP, Ruby, AJAX, .NET), I would rather use for the web, before I even think about JEE (JSP, Servlets and definitely EJB).

So - what is the mobile development language of choice for the iPhone?

The 500,000 sounds wrong. Can you back this up?

You could have java if apple just enabled it: [visit link]

jan

Being a Java and Mac guy I looked for Java on iPhone. Java is no where to be found. For years I've listened to Jonathan Schwartz, CEO at Sun Microsystems, talk about monetizing its Java investment because of the wide-spread availability of the Java runtime - today on 700 Million mobile phones. Rumors have it that Apple sold 500,000 iPhones in the past week.