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cgc · May 27, 2007, 05:24 PM

I have the most current Apple Java on my Mac and just updated Ubuntu 7.04 to its most recent version. I also have Windows XP running whatever it uses to Java. I use Firefox 2 on each (also most current version).

My question is why do all Java applications such as my online college, Yahoo Games, Java.com games, etc. all load and run so much better using all other OSes EXCEPT Mac OS X (10.4.9)? I thought Apple worked closely with Sun to keep their Java identical to the official release. It takes 1-2 minutes for my college site to initialize on my Mac and only 10-15 seconds in all other OSes, and Yahoo Pool is much quicker under other OSes.

Small things like this need to be fixed as they show a weakness in OS X. Thanks.

Chuckit · May 27, 2007, 05:32 PM

Are you running this on the same computer? I haven't found Windows Java to be a speed demon either.

cgc · May 27, 2007, 05:41 PM

Originally Posted by Chuckit

Are you running this on the same computer? I haven't found Windows Java to be a speed demon either.

Yes, I'm running all on my 2.66GHz MacPro with 3GB memory. What's interesting is I'm running the OS X on the Mac and it's slow, then I run Ubuntu, Windows XP, or Solaris via Parallels and it's faster. So under emulation, Java is faster on other OSes than Mac. Not just a little faster, but a LOT faster. I've tried Safari, Opera, Camino, SeaMonkey, Flock, Firefox, and OmniWeb and all are slow.

Thinine · May 27, 2007, 06:19 PM

Parallels is not emulation, it's virtualization, which runs at the full speed of the hardware.

Java will likely get faster in Leopard, especially for Intel machines.

Java is slow right now because Apple does a lot of translation for various graphics and UI calls to use the native OS X stuff, for better quality. So when you're running Java in other OSes, none of that happens. Also, Java for many of those platforms is native, developed directly by Sun. OS X's Java is a port by Apple.

cgc · May 27, 2007, 06:48 PM

Originally Posted by Thinine

Parallels is not emulation, it's virtualization, which runs at the full speed of the hardware.

Java will likely get faster in Leopard, especially for Intel machines.

Java is slow right now because Apple does a lot of translation for various graphics and UI calls to use the native OS X stuff, for better quality. So when you're running Java in other OSes, none of that happens. Also, Java for many of those platforms is native, developed directly by Sun. OS X's Java is a port by Apple.

I saw your original post (MacNN emailed it to me) and don't appreciate the sentiment.

Anyways, while virtualization and emulation are different, they are very similar except virtualization does not mimic hardware...it uses it (e.g. VPC emulated an Intel CPU while Parallels uses the Intel CPU).

How is Apple's Java better? I appreciate their attention to detail, but when copying the industry standard it's probably best to copy it, but the huge gap in performance between Apple Java & JS versus all other OSes is tremendous.

BLAZE_MkIV · May 27, 2007, 08:01 PM

You've seen a AWT gui in a windows box right? I wouldn't to look at that all day and I wouldn't want to have my name attached to a piece of software that looked like that.

Thinine · May 27, 2007, 08:30 PM

Yeah, Apple didn't want Java apps to stick out so horribly. Not that they look like native apps now, but they look better than they would without any work at all.

And cgc, my comment about emulation vs. virtualization was just to point out that virtualization operates at native speed, so your virtualization of Windows, Linux, and Solaris is just as fast (or nearly so) as booting the OS. The two technologies are in no way equivalent, and neither is their performance.

Apple is starting to work on moving back to the native Java routines, so it should get faster.