Are there any issues or benefits I should be aware of from switching my Java development from Windows to Mac?

Question

I have been given the option to either have a Windows laptop or a Mac laptop to do my Java development on. Before committing to one of these, I thought I would find out if there are any issues or benefits I should know about using a Mac laptop over a windows laptop?

One thing I did hear was that the Java JDK releases are not always the latest for Macs and you need to wait a while.

My environment is simple: Eclipse with Java EE 5.0

Answer 1

For your configuration, there's no problem... That's true that sometimes you have to wait for release but nothing really insurmountable... I got some issues with Eclipse, though. It crashes quite often but I'm doing intensive stuff...

One my issue was with the shortcuts, that sounds dumb but I'm a heavy shortcut user and switching between control and the apple keys and alt was sometimes hard to remember..

Answer 2

Could be of interest to know that Apple's support for Java 1.6 is only for the 64 bit intel architectures. If you are runnning a 32 bits cpu you have to be satisfied with 1.5

Answer 3

I have not found major problems working on Macs for Java development (I usually develop both in Linux and Mac platforms). Regarding the sdk it is true that they are released with a delay compared to the Linux/Windows versions.

You will find the latest jdk at the Apple Developer Connection, you will need an apple developer account (it is free). As an advice, keep the images you download from Apple as it may happen that after a period of time they are not available, specially for old releases.

Regarding swing development, I think the SpringLayout is processed a bit different (some springs missing) as some JPanels developed in Linux produce some warnings in Mac. JPanels developed on Mac work fine in other platforms.