I work on a similar gut feeling to you. I would guess that at any
time, 15-20%
of the user base has the newest versions, 60% have recent versions and
the rest have antediluvian versions. In the case of Java that would
mean at
the moment 20% 1.5, 60% 1.4 and 1.3, 20% older versions. Personally, I
develop for 1.4 onwards.
From past experience working on the other side (i.e. as someone who
commissioned software rather than someone who developed it) I always
found
it irritating if new software required my customers to upgrade their
JRE: if
you balance the inconvenience of upgrading for several thousand
customers
against the inconvenience of developing in a slightly older version
for a
handful of developers, you may come to the conclusion that the customer
interest carries more weight.
I am aware that certain new features lead to more efficient development,
lower development costs and higher job satisfaction, but newer
software is
often less stable, which means more maintenance (...=less job
satisfaction?...) and higher costs.
I think it would help if Apple got their OS versions and their JVM
versions
in sync, but I suspect this is not easy to arrange. But I develop in
Java
because I want to deliver to as many platforms as possible, so I
accept that
the Java release cycle probably cannot match all the release cycles
of all
the OSes.
I too find the message that Apple is sending with the half-hearted
release
of Java 1.5 confusing. Given my position as outlined above, it doesn't
encourage me to move quickly to 1.5, but then 1.5 strikes me as being
a rather more radical step than the previous upgrades with
correspondingly
larger risks (not least of all in backwards compatibility). Perhaps
this is the
reason for Apple's prevarication. Nonetheless, I would welcome a clearer
message in a marketing sense, rather than a purely technical one.
Steve
On 27 Aug 2005, at 17:30, Lawrence Nussbaum wrote:
While its nice for us developers to be on the cutting edge, I'm
wondering
if anyone here can speak to what percentage of potential users of
their
specific Java/Mac/Multi-platform application have which version of
OS X?
Or which JVM on other platforms?
In our case, we are always going to expect and code to the previous
release of Java (1.4) for the widest potential market for our
software.
That decision was not based on anything other than gut feeling between
myself and my partners. I'd love to hear anything more concrete
from the
community.
Larry
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Knowledge
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