Symphonious

Living in a state of accord.

Category Archives: Apple

OS X Lion: iCal Repeatedly Asks for Google Calendar Password

The one problem I’ve found when upgrading to Lion is that suddenly iCal couldn’t sync to my Google Apps Calendar account – instead it repeatedly asked for the password. I’m still not really sure what caused this, but my solution was to simply delete both ~/Library/Preferences/*iCal* and ~/Library/Calendars. You really only want to do that if you exclusively use Google Calendar. If you have local calendars deleting ~/Library/Calendars will delete them.

Once I’d done that, I re-enabled the Calendars option for the account in System Preferences, “Mail, Contacts and Calendars”, entered my password one last time and it worked perfectly.

Apple-Scented Coffee Beans are Accurate

So Apple have announced that they will be contributing large swaths of code to the OpenJDK project and that from Java 7 onwards, Java will be a separate download from Oracle, much like Flash is now a separate download from Adobe. This really shouldn’t be unexpected for anyone who was paying attention to what was going on rather than just running around thinking the sky was falling.

This is fantastic news for Java developers of all types. Mac Java developers have been asking for Java to be separated from the OS for many, many years so that multiple versions of Java are more manageable and especially to decouple Java releases from the OS release timeline.

Since the main JVM for OS X will now be open source, intrepid developers can dive in and fix issues they run into or at least dig into the code to understand it better and find work-arounds they can use. Apple has historically been quite innovative with it’s JVM port as well, bringing some great stuff to the JVM on OS X first1. It should now be easier to share those innovations across platforms which is great for all Java users.

It’s also nice to know that Java 6 will continue to be bundled with the OS in OS X 10.7 Lion. That gives a nice ramp-up for Apple and developers to transition to an optionally installed JVM and ensure things work smoothly either by applications bundling a JVM with the app or the installer or through auto-install methods for applets and webstart etc.

Finally, this should mean that JDK7 development on Mac will be done in the open, giving developers earlier and far greater access to try it out and report any issues back.

Seems like a huge win all round to me.

1 – for example the ability to share the core classes between JVM instances, but also a lot of stuff in how swing works and integrates with the OS ↩

On the DVD vs in Software Update

James Turner gives a week in review and mentions the deprecated Java on OS X issue1. One thing to correct:

Deprecation basically means that neither package will be delivered as part of the installation DVDs, and updates will not come via the Apple update mechanisms. It doesn't mean they won't be available anymore, it just means you'll have to download them directly from Oracle and Adobe.

Firstly, there’s nothing to suggest that Java won’t come from Apple but not be part of the standard OS X package.

Secondly, just because something isn’t on the OS X install DVD doesn’t mean it’s not updated via Software Update. Aperture for example is a separately purchased product but updates come through Apple Software Update automatically. On Lion, software update is likely to open up further since it’s the obvious conduit to deliver updates for apps on the Mac App Store.

Of course, if the JVM winds up coming from Oracle, I wouldn’t hold your breath for updates via Software Update.

1 – I’m not sure how deprecated Java counts as lost in the hubbub of Back to the Mac, from where I’m sitting it looks a lot like the other way around but anyway. ↩

Reading the Apple-Scented Coffee Beans

It’s interesting to see how many people are jumping to conclusions around the very carefully worded deprecation notice for Java in OS X. Read it carefully and pay careful attention to what it actually says:

As of the release of Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 3, the Java runtime ported by Apple and that ships with Mac OS X is deprecated. Developers should not rely on the Apple-supplied Java runtime being present in future versions of Mac OS X.

Most notably the note only refers to the Apple ported JVM that ships with OS X. This leaves the door open for an Apple ported JVM that ships as a separate download and for a non-Apple JVM that ships with OS X.

If you can drown out all the screaming and gnashing of teeth and pay attention to the Apple Java-Dev list you’d also notice:

  1. A huge amount of effort went into this release, especially setting things up to support multiple JVMs from multiple vendors. In the past, there was only one JVM available on an OS X install, it was upgraded with the OS and provided by Apple1.
  2. Even after this release, the Apple engineers who post to the list are still talking about their long term plans for the JVM (one example).

No one outside of Apple knows for sure what the future of Java on OS X is, and those inside who do know aren’t allowed to talk, but given the currently available evidence it seems at least as likely that Apple will continue to provide a JVM but as a separate download (or possibly just an optional install) as it is that they’ll abandon Java entirely.

Yes, there is a chance that Apple will just walk away from Java and leave a gaping void, but I don’t see indications that it’s a corporate strategy of Apple. Remember that Apple isn’t a company that sends a lot of mixed messages. They can turn a marketing message on a dime and they don’t pull punches. They’re also small enough and tightly managed enough that it’s rare for one part of the company to be off doing something that’s not inline with the company direction. If people are still building improvements to Java on OS X rather than moving to maintenance mode, that’s a strong signal that there is a future of some kind.

The real problem here is the same one that always happens with Apple – they’re not communicating their plans so developers can plan accordingly and not panic. But if you haven’t learnt to roll with the punches that approach delivers, you’re not a real Mac developer.

1 – A situation which caused most of the complaints on the java-dev list.↩

Why The iPhone Has Succeeded

Stephen O’Grady:

Remember that, at its core, the iPhone offers not a whole lot more than a phone, browser, camera, iPod and GPS. Which, ok, is kind of impressive. But not truly differentiating, Apple’s acknowledged strength in user experiences aside. As good and smart as Apple is at design – and they are very, very good – they’re never going to be as good and smart as everyone else. We see this in the enterprise world frequently, where vendors that foster an ecosystem succeed and those that don’t, well, don’t. But we haven’t seen too many examples of this play out in the consumer world yet, which is one of the reasons the iPhone is such an interesting platform. With the App Store, Apple’s attempting to cement its role with a community play.

I find it interesting that everyone holds up the App Store as the key reason for the iPhone being successful – the key differentiating factor. Has everyone forgotten that the iPhone originally launched with no developer SDK at all and how well did that go? That’s right, it was a massive success.

The iPhone is not succeeding purely because of the App Store, in fact it could just as easily be the opposite – the App Store is succeeding because the iPhone is so popular. There’s nothing simple about developing for the iPhone – you have to learn Objective-C and Cocoa Touch, you have to pay to get involved at all and you don’t know if you’ll be allowed to ship your app until after you finish it and submit it to Apple. So why do people do it? Because there are a huge number of iPhone users out there.

In the short time the iPhone has been out, people have simply forgotten how revolutionary the phone and Apple software that comes with it actually is. The third party apps are just very tasty icing on top.