That's interesting - what is Apple building on Java? They're still on Java 6 I think? I thought they deprecated their Java system APIs years ago as well?
Been a while since I worked at Apple but it would likely still be:
- Apple ID
- Apple Online Store
- App Store
- Bug Reporter/Radar
- iCloud Apps e.g. Mail.
- iTunes Connect
- iTunes Store
- WWDC
Pretty much all of the internal apps will be in Java unless they are using off the shelf software e.g. discussions. In addition you would have all of the companies they acquired and whatever tech stacks they use e.g. Siri.
Apple have an OSS framework built on Netty (whose lead developer is employed by Apple) named ServiceTalk, and this talk [1] says that almost all back end services are Java-based.
I have no idea where the idea of Java 6 being in use comes from.
> where the idea of Java 6 being in use comes from
Possibly from confusion with the last time Apple actually shipped a JDK/runtime to the public. They used to produce their own optimized distribution, which had better Cocoa widgets among other things. It was part of the original big push to get decs on OSX, it’s mentioned in Jobs’s keynotes etc. They later deprecated it once they reached critical mass, and discontinued it; if i remember correctly, the last jdk they shipped was a v6.
Yes, it’s more likely that an app written with Swift/Obj-C and AppKit/UIKit/SwiftUI will be more tailored to macOS specifically and will better take advantage of platform facilities than apps written with a different language and toolkit (such as Java+ Swing). Apps built with third party tools tend to be more lowest-common-denominator.
Nobody cares, proved by electron and popularity of web apps in general. The only b thing Apple will achieve is to speed up the native going into irrelevance and being replaced with things like electron. Regular people don't care about "looks and feels native" zealots. All the relevant software has distinct, software specific looks. Adobe suite, Fusion, bunch of engineering tools, IDEs.
Regular Mac users _used to_ care. For many years, one of the defining characteristics of Macs was the high quality native apps, all with consistent look, feel and behavior. Mac users would refuse to use apps that weren't sufficiently Mac-like. Developers of Mac apps had a similar passion and perfectionism for good UX and UI.
Somewhere along the way, this part of Apple culture got lost. I think Apple's commercial success is part of the reason. The traditional Mac user base got diluted by lots of newcomers who didn't have the same high expectations and requirements for good and consistent user interfaces. The traditional Mac developers got diluted by programmers from other platforms, who – although not being technically inferior in any way – did not have the same passion or understanding of Apple's UI philosophy, often not even bothering to study the Human Interface Guidelines.
Funny thing is that those are both products that many are reaching for alternatives to whenever viable. As powerful as they may be as tools, there's quite a lot that's throughly mediocre or even bad about them.
There are examples of truly great apps that use their own look and feel, but I don't think either of those are among them.
