The latest cell phones can show you the nearest bathrooms in San Francisco or which subway to take in London. They can also help with your diet by tracking calorie intake. Behind such programs and more is the very technology at the center of an intense battle between Microsoft Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. over control of desktop computers. Though Sun has mostly lost that fight, the beleaguered Silicon Valley icon is trying to give new life to its Java programming language with an aggressive push into mobile devices. Once again, it finds a foe in Microsoft. But this time Sun has the lead.
Java at Center of Desktop Battle
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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or sells it to IBM before they go under….
Sun is healthier than Microsoft on the Linux platform, that’ is for certain. The Linux platform is the future of business, so how is it that Sun has host to Microsoft. I don’t understand.
and what about those .Net libraries, when will they be submitted for ISO standardization?
Well they are already standardised by the ECMA, who have an agreement with ISO so the ISO standardisation shouldn’t take that long. However it was only the base libraries. If you want to do anything with GUI’s or databases, that is most programs, the libraries that deal with that have been filleted out.
Java will win the mobile battle, and has a good chance on the server. After what MS is suposed to have done to Sendo, there main phone manufacturer, they are only going to have the no-name white box manufactures left.
.NET already lost on the server…. Java is a much more mature API, with J2EEs time-tested features. .NET is new and untested, and won’t be used despite its performance claims. On the server side, Java is not the bottleneck, the database is…
Everybody is so sure that Sun is going to bomb – these prognostications will become a self-fulfilling prophecy if enough idiots take to heart what everyone is pointlessly conjecturing.
But then again they’ve been saying that about Apple for longer than I can remember and they’re still a profitable company that seems to hit every new technology just in time to seem like they are pioneering it. (WiFi, USB, non biege computers etc).
Same for SUN. They still make quite good servers, and profits.
I do this for a living so I might know a thing or two.
About 2 or 3 years ago when I first engaged in this constantly evolving project here at this NPO I work for, Sun did not release a JVM for PocketPC devices running on StrongARM processors. Do you think it was a coincidence that Microsoft made StrongARM and ARM compatibles the standard CPU for PocketPC devices? *Hint hint*
The idea at the the time was that I would use Java to develop this specific application for various handheld devices. Java support for PocketPC devices using StrongARM CPUs did eventually show up but not from Sun and it was not free. We would have had to purchase 20+ licenses to use the commercial JVM, and I could not convince my superiors to do that with a pilot project.
We also looked at the Palm Pilot platform for it’s cost advantage over PocketPC’s however there was not official JVM implementation from Sun (at that time). The JVMs that were available were created by Java fans and for the most part were just hacks to get it to work. The easiest one to setup that I could find did not use standard Java classes that I was used to but rather a subset of classes. This means code I have wrote would not be usable here. So Java + Palm Pilot was a no go.
The whole idea of “write once, run anywhere” is great for mainstream software that is used everyday and by everyone – for example appointment book, contacts, instant messaging, etc. They carry little baggage in terms of the binary and execution performance. But what about specific purpose software such as mapping and GPS software on handhelds or even mobile phones? The original application my company was using was created in VB, performance was sluggish so I rewrote it in C++. With the increased performance and responsiveness I was able to add on many more features and functionality.
Memory limitations, lack of CPU power, and battery life limitations. Those are crucial factors for developing software on mobile devices. I mention battery life because people don’t want to waste precious battery life minutes looking at a “spinning hour glass” while the application is busy.
I gave up on Java after many disappointments. I refuse to move on to .Net because I don’t see any point in it. My C++/MFC code for desktop Windows ports very easily over to the PocketPC platform. And now that all PocketPC’s use StrongARM or compatible CPUs, I don’t even have to worry about redistribution of binaries.
//The latest cell phones can show you the nearest bathrooms in San Francisco or which subway to take in London.//
So can a good map, on sale for about $4 at any gas/petrol station.
//They can also help with your diet by tracking calorie intake.//
er … a _PHONE_ can help me with my diet? How, by eating it? Stupid. Talk about creating a solution for a problem nobody has.
since there is already 100 million java phones in the world already.
hellooooo – think for just 1 second before replying!!
“So can a good map, on sale for about $4 at any gas/petrol station.” Yes, but I am not near a gas/petrol station. I am standing in a cellar somewhere stupid… *much* easier to use the build in map. And *Everybody* has a mobilephone
Likewise with calorie intake, since I have the phone near me, I can type down whenever I eat – and it can say whether or not I am approaching my limit.
sheesh people don’t think these days!
Let me simulate what life is like on my new Nokia 6800 with Java apps on it:
Me: Menu – Applications – select Application – Open
Phone: Opening Application…
Phone: Opening Application…..
Phone: Opening Application……..
Phone: Opening Application………….
Me: *sigh*
Once again we have a market segment with only one real player. Thank GOD Microsoft is doing something here, or we’ll be the mercy of slow, slow Java.
Java: Slow on the desktop, slow on the handheld. Nothing changes.
Once again we have a market segment with only one real player. Thank GOD Microsoft is doing something here, or we’ll be the mercy of slow, slow Java.
Luckily most phones also have color screens now, so they can “blue screen” 🙂 j/k
and JDK 1.4.2 is 3-4 times slower than 1.3.1 Oh well…
I submitted bug report (with precise technical reasons) and the reaction was like “we don’t care… too late…”
Way to go, Sun!!!
Very disappointing!
And trolls from diferent races fighting each others… what a view…
Yes… it’s kind of off-topic… but nevertheless, has the same value as the other posts…
Beleaguered? I though that particular adjective was reserved for Apple
I think that java is dead. Don’t you?
Brian Matzon said – “And *Everybody* has a mobilephone ”
not me! And i won’t until they get fully functional web browsing, JVMs, and full IP capability – that means ssh and telnet.
I like to make phone calls on my cell phone. Once they put that feature in, I’m sold.
not me! And i won’t until they get fully functional web browsing, JVMs, and full IP capability – that means ssh and telnet.
<a href=”http://www.mu-j.com/mutelnet/“>Telnet
I’ve not seen SSH yet, but <a href=”http://j2mevnc.sf.net“>VNC, what more do you need?
functional web browsing: <a href=”http://opera.com“>Opera
and JDK 1.4.2 is 3-4 times slower than 1.3.1 Oh well
I have found quite the opposite. I have recompile how 4 major applications that I wrote during the era of 1.3.1. Since then, I have seen nothing but speed improvement with every new release and by far – the greatest speed improvements have come from 1.4.2
What specifically is making your application slower?
”
and JDK 1.4.2 is 3-4 times slower than 1.3.1 Oh well
I have found quite the opposite. I have recompile how 4 major applications that I wrote during the era of 1.3.1. Since then, I have seen nothing but speed improvement with every new release and by far – the greatest speed improvements have come from 1.4.2
What specifically is making your application slower?
”
come on anonymous. don`t feed the troll. –: )
Have anyone of you (fans of Java) tried to code anything on mobile java platform ? I tried and it was really disappointing experince. Performance was terrible but that was not the worst thing. The worst things are the smallest ones but then it appears that they are more important 😉 4 example consider multithreaded programs. What’s the use of timeout parameter in wait() synchronisation functions ? It’s useless because in code I can’t get to know whether my wait was satisfied or not! It’s suitable for simple games only. Developing kind of business application is horrible and hence I state that in current version JAVA for mobile devices os piece of crap. When comparing to .NET Compact Framework it’s simple to tell who is the winner.
come on anonymous. don`t feed the troll. –: )
I am being serious … I have found jdk 1.4.2 extremely fast and am delighted to find that SUN is NOT hanging us Java developers out to dry with slow VM. I am excited about the release of 1.5 (generics etc)
hmmm we need both java & dotNET.SUN & MS have the same goal, make money. Until there are competition developers can expect free framework , cheap development tools etc… And constant improvments in frameworks.From developer view I find .NET a little nicer than Java(my personal opinion,please don’t flame). But Java has realy great community.
MS & SUN have IP patents over frameworks and they would probably use it if there was no competition. Long live Java long live .NET.
I can’t say that I am a big fan of Java (haven’t been since 97-98 sometime), but I have worked with Java on mobile phones. It is horrible. It is actually worse than if I would be able to write asm directly for the phone instead of having to be subjected to the horror of Java. It lacks unsigned types, enums, floats (yes, no floats on the mobile phones, not even fixed point), performance, a useful API, and the list goes on.
Not to mention how it allocates memory like mad, all the time. And all on an 8-bit platform (do check out what these phones run people) with about 64kb of memory. It really is like running Java on an old C64.
If you want something better, I would suggest http://www.mophun.com which is much more thought through. But I personally would have prefered pure C. There is no point in having one binary for all of these platforms anyways, you have to change too much, and the performance is WAY to different on different phones.
In short, Java is just a huge disapointment.
The Java problems about “write once run nowhere” aren’t Sun problems. They are faults of the manufacturer, but then what do you expect? Screen sizes are different, keyboards are different, colours are different, memory is different, the chips are completely different and that’s within the same range before you even start looking at different brands.
It’s going to take a little bit of time for everything to settle down and the manufacturers are all sitting down together with Sun trying to come up with some common standards to allow “write once run anywhere”. It’s brand new technology, it’s in it’s infancy and will take a few years to settle down – we’re in the game, we should no better – how many years has the net been around and can you honestly say you can “write once run anywhere” HTML yet? IE doesn’t even render the same between versions on Windows and then chuch Mac IE and you’ve got bigger headaches.
What makes the trolls think that .Net isn’t going to have exactly the same problems that Java is having on the mobile platform?
I have been using my sharp zaurus for a while and I think that the Java application runs great in it. Developing Java apps in sharp zaurus can be done using almost any ide.
Maybe version 1.5 will be just the beginning of a huge migration over to Java.