Mac OS X sports a new look, not just on the outside with its great lookand feel but also on the inside. OS X is proudly built on top of a BSD Unix-basedcore foundation. An exciting aspect of the new operating system is that thelatest version of the Java 2 platform (J2SE v1.3) is preinstalled in everyMacintosh notebook and desktop preloaded with OS X. (The current releaseis 10.1, however, in this article I’m referring to the latest version ofOS X, v10.1.1.)
This dramatic shift in Apple’s strategy toward Java support in Mac OScould jump-start the deployment of Java-based applications and services ona user-friendly consumer operating system, specifically with the issues surroundingJava support in the new Microsoft operating system, Windows XP. This articlereviews the features of Apple’s Java implementation and explores what makesOS X a great operating system for the development and deployment of Java-basedapplications.
Introducing Mac OS X
OS X is what a lot of developers want – a familiar Unix-based core witha highly productive and great-looking user interface. Built on top of BSDUnix, OS X represents a significant change from its predecessor, Mac OS 9.Darwin, the core of the operating system, combines the services providedby Unix and the Mac 3.0 kernel with support for high-performance networkingcapabilities. Apple took a big step toward the adoption
of Darwin by making it an open source project (www.darwin.org).Darwin supports a flexible model that in turn supports multiple file systems,including a Universal File System, ISO 9660 (for CD-RW disks), UniversalDisk Format (for DVD volumes), and Mac OS Standard HFS. Key to Darwin issupport for standards-based connectivity including TCP/IP, PPP, HTTP, FTP,DNS, DHCP, LDAP, and NTP.
Layered on top of Darwin are three graphics subsystems:
1. Quartz: A lightweight window server and PDF-based 2Dgraphics rendering library
2. Open GL: A 3D rendering model
3. QuickTime: For multimedia capabilities
To provide compatibility with its predecessor, Mac OS 9, OS X also supportsa “classic” mode, which makes the system available in a dual operating systemmode by running both the OS 9 Classic and OS X operating system. (It’s actuallypossible to configure OS X to boot with the two operating systems at startup to avoid the delay of a later start up.)
From a development perspective, OS X provides multiple options – Carbon,the traditional Mac OS API that supports completely backwards compatibilitywith OS 9, and Cocoa, Apple’s next-generation development framework for OSX “native” applications. A key component to OS X and the focus of this articleis Apple’s support for the latest version of the Java platform. OS X 10.1supports Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE) version 1.3.1, and HotSpot, the latestproduction version available for Java deployment. Java is treated as a first-classcitizen in OS X and, along with Cocoa, is expected to represent a key frameworkthat developers will mostly adopt to build applications for OS X.
