Early adopters of Apple"s newly released OS X 10.5 Leopard operating system may soon have a sour taste in their mouth as reports file in that users are unable to work with the latest version of the Java programming language. Following the release of OS X Leopard on Friday evening, threads began to appear in Apple"s support forum where numerous users reported that code written in Java 1.6 (also known as Java 6) failed to execute. The problem allegedly lies in an outdated version of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), an application that allows OS X to interpret and run Java code. Java 1.6 was officially released in December 2006, but Leopard reportedly supports only Java 1.4 due to Apple"s insistence on developing the JVM themselves, rather than allow Sun to do it. Apple did not respond to a request for comment.
Users on Apple"s support forums are, to say the least, a bit miffed at the development. "This is a show stopper for me, and I will have to revert to 10.4, since my job as a software engineer for Sun requires Java 6," wrote one user. "This will likely prevent a lot of people from upgrading." Users were further angered when many of the threads about the issue were reportedly deleted from Apple"s support forum without explanation.