Mac OS X, Apple's new operating system provides an excellent Java development environment. Apple seems to be moving towards increased support for Java both as a platform and a programming language. This sitelet provides resource links and articles that will hopefully help developers explore the integration between Java and Mac OS X. Comments and article submissions are welcome and the WhiningDog.net forums are a great place to post them. [forums]

As always, this articles represent a learning process as we also go through our explorations. If there are any incorrect observations or errata, please don't hesitate to post a message on the forums to let us know.

Articles

There's no place like JDK Home

Where is everything on Mac OS X? I don't have any environment variables! This article takes a look at where all the java classes reside in OS X and explains a little about the philosophy behind packages, JVM versions and the like.

A look at programming for Cocoa using the Java language. This article walks through the examples from the book "Learning Cocoa" by O'Reilly Press and converts the examples into Cocoa Java

Mac OS X is a great platform for developing graphical application in Pure Java! Creating applications using the Swing gui classes in Java allows for a truly cross-platform application with the Aqua interface. This article goes through a simple example and begins to explore some of the differences between Swing and OS X.

This article takes a look at building a simple Swing application using Project Builder. Looking at the generated code gives us even more insight into how we can tailor Java Swing applications into Apple Starndard applications

This article is an update onsome of the changes for Mac Java programming that came with the Java 1.4.1 update that Apple recently released.

Resources

Java Resources

• J2SE API - Sun's API documentation for the J2SE (Java 2 Standard Edition) reference implementation. Apple currently has the 1.3.1 specification implemented.
• OpenGL for Java- Currently the Java3D specification has not been implemented in the Apple MRJ (Macintosh Runtime Java). Instead a set of JNI (Java Native Interface) classes that wrap around the calls to OpenGL are available in these classes.

Mac Related

• Mac OS X Developer site - The Apple site dedicated to developers for Mac OS X. Of particular interest to us are the sections on Cocoa programming and Java programming
• Building a Cocoa Java application - Apple's simple tutorial introducing developers to how to program for OS X using Java and the Cocoa framework
• Cocoa Developer Documentation - Apple's Cocoa development site providing Objective-C and Java API's for Cocoa.
• MacDevCenter - O'Reilly networks site for Macintosh programming. Includes articles and opinions on Mac OS X, Cocoa and Java development. Especially check out Mike Beam's series of articles on GUI development in Cocoa.

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