Sun says the best part about waking up is Java on your iPhone

Java on iPhone Update 3-11-08: In light of restrictions in Apple’s terms that do not allow running interpreted code, Sun has now apparently retreated on the Java promise, saying: “we really do want to deliver a JVM if at all possible.”

I know precisely what you were thinking when the news about the iPhone SDK came out at last week’s Apple event: what about all those Java applications I want to run on my iPhone? Rest easy, friend, for you are not alone in your wondering. If running cross-platform apps based on the programming language that I hated learning in my one and only Computer Science class ever is your cup of, well, joe, then you will be taken care of.

Sun, the makers of Java, have announced that they will be bringing a Java Virtual Machine to the iPhone, based on Java Micro Edition (ME).

“Once our JVM is on the phone, we anticipate that a large number of Java applications would run on the phone,” [Sun vice president of Java marketing Eric] Klein said.

“We’re going to work to make sure that the JVM offers the Java applications as much access to the native functionality of the iPhone as possible,” said Klein.

While that seems like it would certainly open up the iPhone to a lot of pre-existing applications, it remains to be seen exactly how a JVM would work on the iPhone, given the restrictions of the SDK—Sun, however, remains confident that it will work, and plans to make the JVM accessible for the iPod touch as well.

I can probably count the number of Java apps that I would use on a single hand or less, but I dig that plenty of people might find this useful. What do you say: good? bad? almost certainly ugly?

Category: Software

Posted by Dan Moren on Mar 10 2008, 12:25 PM ET

Comments (4)

I say: bad.

Posted by Business Marketing | March 10, 2008 12:32 PM

If you're going to write an app to use the native iPhone functionality, it would be iPhone-only; so why not just write it in Cocoa Touch? If you aren't going to write an app that is iPhone-aware, ewww.

Posted by Dave-O | March 10, 2008 3:35 PM

This is great news. I've been quite looking forward to a way to slow my iPhone down to a crawl since I've gotten it. And Sun seems to be stepping up and taking the initiative.

Posted by Sean | March 11, 2008 9:18 AM

Sun and other have failed to read the fine print in the functionality provided by the SDK:

Apple iPhone SDK Agreement: “No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Published APIs and builtin interpreter(s)… An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise.”

This is apparently enforced by the SDK APIs. Say goodbye to Javs on the iPhone.

Posted by Marco Papa | March 11, 2008 5:09 PM

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