Sam Berlin wrote:
>I quite simply cannot tell the average Joe or Jane that wants to use
>my product, "Oh, Sorry -- Get a new computer first."
>...
>Please realize that this is a problem for *users*. Not me. Not You.
It seems to me it's only a problem for users if you make it a problem for
users.
You have to intentionally choose Java 6 as your minimal JRE version first.
If you don't do that, then your users couldn't care less, because they'll
never notice. They will continue to run on Java 5, or whatever your
current minimum JRE version actually is. At some future time it may be
worthwhile to require Java 6 as a minimum, but frankly, that time is not
now.
If you do choose to require Java 6 as a minimum, it then leads to the question:
What capabilities of Java 6 does your software require?
If the answer goes something like "I (the developer) want to use features
X, Y, and Z", then you are placing your wants and desires above the needs
of your customers. That doesn't seem like a good business decision to me.
YMMV.
If the answer includes things like "Java 6 has fixes for X, Y, and Z bugs",
then the question is whether you currently have work-arounds or not. If
you have work-arounds, then you gain nothing by requiring Java 6. If you
have no work-arounds, and the bug is fatal to your program, then that's a
good reason to require Java 6. Anything else, like minor cosmetic bugs
with or without workarounds, seems like a bad reason.
I also want to point out that you can use (or even require) 64-bits in your
app even without Java 6. You just build your app with only 64-bit entries
in its Info.plist. There is a 64-bit Java 5 JVM pre-installed with every
Leopard. Also, if you have JNI-libs, strip out all but the 64-bit
versions. You might want to do this and then run the app on both Java 5
and Java 6, to see what happens. Who knows, you might find a fatal bug in
Java 6 that prevents your particular app from using it. This has happened
before.
Finally, most apps currently run as 32-bit. When even one app runs
64-bits, the OS then has to load all the 64-bit system libraries into
memory, and keep them there for as long as the 64-bit app runs. I suggest
trying this and observing what happens with Activity Monitor. If you don't
have a compelling reason to go 64-bit, Java or not, I recommend against
doing it.
-- GG
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