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The Apple Blog
The Apple Blog, published by and for the day-to-day Apple user, is a prominent source for news, reviews, walkthroughs, and real life application of all Apple products.
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If Apple Won't Build It, The Community Will
The average Mac user is probably unaware of the smoldering controversy surrounding Apple’s lack of support for Java 6. In fact, I’ll hazard a guess that the average Mac user may not even know or care that Java is installed at all, but continued, first-class support for Sun’s flagship, cross-platform development and run-time environment is critical to the future of OS X — both desktop and server — in many institutions/organizations.

Not a Straight Path

The road to Java on OS X has been rocky at best. Eric Burke has created a definitive timeline comparing Sun's Java releases with Apple's Java releases and does an admirable job justifying Apple's release strategy to-date, but the fact remains that Java on OS X has lagged behind it’s Windows, Linux and Solaris counterparts. It may be prettier and better integrated with the desktop experience, but it has suffered — at times — from performance issues and lack of features that have fostered many heated threads in the Java community.

It’s About the Developers

Even with these issues, you can find hundreds of well-maintained Java apps that take advantage of OS X on Apple’s download site, Version Tracker and MacUpdate (as well as other aggregate listing sites). Why? — because Java has a huge developer following, is used as the primary teaching language in a large percentage of schools and (anticipates much feedback in the comments as I write this) is much easier to develop programs in than other languages.

It’s no secret that Apple has touted Objective-C as the language de rigueur for OS X, and I suspect that part of the reason for the lack of Java 6 support in Leopard is due to the focus on enhancements in Objective-C (including some that make it more Java-like), Xcode and the inclusion of new debugging and performance analysis tools. However, Java 6 has some enhancements of it’s own, including major performance improvements, GUI toolkit updates and the ability to interface with the same debugging/performance back-end Apple is utilizing. In fact, Java 6 seemed like a no-brainer to be included in Leopard, or at least shortly thereafter. Developers who have been focusing on taking advantage of these latest improvements in the Java platform are more likely to keep focusing their efforts there since they then have the ability to deploy the results of those efforts on multiple platforms (except, of course, Apple’s).

It’s About the Enterprise

Lack of Apple-backed support for Java 6 will also slow or halt the adoption of OS X in the enterprise. While PHP and Ruby are all the rage with the Web 2.0 intelligentsia, Java remains the backbone of corporate web application development. If Apple wants to ensure continued adoption of OS X server (and desktop) at businesses they must show a commitment to the full Java roadmap and keep current with platform releases. Any sign of wavering support will kill current adoption and prevent further investment — at least in the short term — in Apple technologies for Java applications.

It’s About the Community

The education/research community has been adopting OS X since the early releases and Apple itself showcased scientific development on OS X at the 2007 WWDC. It’s extremely important to ensure that OS X meets the needs of this group of users and yet Apple has not made one of the core components available to them.

Thankfully, rather than abandon the platform completely, the community — led by Landon Fuller — has done what Apple has failed to and is set to release an open source, independently built version, based on the BSD port of Java 6, in the near future (preview releases are available now). The GUI won’t be as integrated as Apple’s official releases have been and there will be some rough spots as they work out all the kinks, but it’s great to see developers take the initiative and do what Apple will not.

This work is only possible due to the open source underpinnings of OS X and the hard work of a number of very smart people dedicated to running their applications on Apple technologies. Apple should take heed from this community effort and finalize their Java 6 release as soon as possible, then get to work on adding Java support for the iPhone (one of the easiest ways to enable secure/sandboxed application development/deployment).

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http://theappleblog.com/2007/11/28/if-apple-wont-build-it-the-community-will/#comments
Xslimmer
Hard disk space can be extremely valuable, especially for notebook owners. I find myself constantly auditing the contents of my disk, usually with tools like GrandPerspective and WhatSize to find the gremlins that are munching on my available space. Of course my Applications folder always pops up as the biggest offender, but there’s nothing I can do about the whopping 4 GB required for stuff like Final Cut Studio 2, right? I mean, every line of code under the hood of Motion is being used isn’t it?

Apparently not. A little app called Xslimmer claims to free up wasted disk space by removing unnecessary code from Universal Binaries that doesn’t fit with your machine’s architecture. It will also remove unneeded languages from various apps (Adium, for example, has over 20 languages according to Xslimmer’s site) to help slim them down and recover your disk space.

How it Works

Xslimmer’s interface is extremely straightforward. You simply drag applications onto Xslimmer and in analyzes each one to see if it can be slimmed. If the app can be slimmed, Xslimmer will display the current size of the app and it’s estimated “slimmed” size. Some applications cannot be slimmed because there is no extra code or languages, or its on Xslimmer’s blacklist (which, as the name implies, are applications that are not allowed to be slimmed for various reasons). For example, most of CS3 sits on the blacklist:

You can add apps one by one or use the “Genie” to scan your entire disk for potentially fat binaries. When you’re ready, click the “Slim!” button and you’ll be prompted with a warning to back up your applications. You can choose to have Xslimmer save backups somewhere locally, so that you can make sure all applications run as expected after slimming and restore them if needed. Restoring is a simple process - just click the “History” button, and click the restore icon in the history dialog.

The Skinny

I was able to save 2.5 GB from 95 applications in less than ten minutes (though I won’t see my real disk savings until I nuke my backups). That beats the heck out of the 100mb or so that it would take me hours to free up by sifting through all my documents that might be scattered across my machine. Even better, your apps will run the same or even faster than they did before slimming (though there are potentially applications that will not run after the slimming process - good thing the backups seem to be sound).

Overall, Xslimmer is extremely intuitive and kind of fun to use, especially when you see some of the notable savings:

Automator: 28.7mb to 2.95mb
Calculator: 13.4mb to 1.59mb
Disk Utility: 32.7mb to 3.88mb
DVD Player: 42.7mb to 6.48mb
iTunes: 129mb to 31.4mb
Preview: 70.1mb to 9.71mb

At $11.95, Xslimmer is a steal. My only real gripe is that you can’t slim Adobe CS3 apps, but I think that’s something to take up with Adobe and not Xslimmer. You can try a demo and save up to 50mb, if you wanna take it for a test drive before you drop the cash. I would strongly suggest that you make sure that all your apps run as expected after slimming though. I haven’t experienced any issues yet, but better safe than sorry.

Комментарии к сообщению:
http://theappleblog.com/2007/11/28/review-xslimmer/#comments