Google offers tool to bridge Android and iOS app development

Recently, the Google released the tool with the aim to make it easier to port the software between two major smartphone platforms, by converting Java code for Android into Objective-C code that can be compiled to run on Apple iOS devices.

Google’s Tom Ball in a post announcing the tool declared that J2ObjC is not a Java emulator but instead converts a Java classes to Objective-C classes that directly use the iOS Foundation Framework.

The tool doesn’t claim to make writing mobile apps a completely cross-platform affair. Developers who use it to translate their apps will still need to write the UI code in Objective-C using Apple’s iOS SDK. However, the developers can code their core non-UI functionality in Java, then compile versions of those portions of their apps for both Android and iOS from the single code base, rather than maintaining a separate code tree for each platform.

In fact, Ball revealed that they can use the same Java code to develop the web-based versions of their apps using the Google Web Toolkit, which can translate Java Code into JavaScript to run in the browser. Code functionality would remain same for all versions because they would be based on the same source code. Google also revealed that j2objc works with the most build tools, including Xcode and the translation from Java to Objective-C, is totally automated. No additional editing of the tool is necessary.

J2ObjC supports the full Java 6 language and the key runtime features include exceptions, generic types, threads, reflection and their anonymous classes. It even does the perfect job of modeling Java-style memory management in Objective-C.

To build and use the system, developers will need a machine running Mac OS X 10.7 or higher with Xcode 4 or higher and JDK 1.6. As for now, the project is running between alpha and beta quality with the initial release given number 0.8 as an indication of its release status.

Oracle threatens to kill Java

Recently, it was reported that Oracle had stopped the development of Java Enterprise Edition which is, popular server-side platform for running Java applications. Java is the most popular language and is embedded with thousands of enterprise apps where customers had invested their time and money. The company had pulled off the funding and had also asked the developers to work on their other projects.

Decisions happened in the company were much opaque as the reason for this freeze is not yet revealed, and even the employees were not aware of such move. Before some period of time, Oracle also cut the cord of project which it couldn’t monetize and also restricted the open source project access for them. Global IT organizations are much reliant on Java and hence these would be very difficult for them.

Java is used by Google in Android language which seems to be the reason of this quarrels by Oracle. Oracle had spoiled its loyalty in whole java community towards java platform. As it is the open sourced platform, the entire java ecosystem is dependent on Oracle since more than 2 decades. Now, this would result in the slow updates and of course, security would matter the most, hence there will be the need to replace the millions of servers with Java EE embedded components. More dispute would arise due to it, which may result in the separation of oracle and java.

Oracle developed a very bad reputation amongst the developer’s community. Oracle also closed the button on development efforts into community-driven technologies like Open Solaris and OpenOffice.org. But, it is revealed that Oracle also had several reasons for not cutting the relations with Java. Oracle’s own software and services are dependent on Java, which leads to more than 70% of the revenue. If Oracle pulls up the ties with Java EE than, Oracle itself would be in heavy revenue loss. Additionally, Java had also invested much time, efforts and money for java programming language. Seeing all these issues, it seems that, Oracle would source Java EE as a third party developer keeping the standards of Java SE.

Safari 10 dumps out Java, Silverlight and Flash

Apple has taken a new curve, and added a new stumps to the pitch of a Flash. Ricky Mondello - one of team member of the Safari, revealed that, Flash will be automatically get disabled from the Safari 10and will ship the new MacOS operating system later this year.

The firm is not just dumping out Adobe, but will block the other plugins like QuickTime, Silverlight and Java. If the site element is requesting Flash, it will initially tell that plugin is not installed, and would display Adobe flash link. In Safari 10, when the user clicks on that link Safari will prompt the user to know that plugin is actually in their system, whether they want to install it or not. 

In a blog post, Ricky Mondello highlights that, running HTML5 instead of plugin would bring the user with more benefits like improved battery, performance and more. These standards now include much more functionality needed to support media and interactive experiences.

With other plugins, user would see content placeholder on a site with some form of “click to use” button. Selecting these will give out options for flash. Once it is authorized Safari will continue to use those plugin until it haven’t been used there over the months. Apple recommends web developers implement features using technologies built into Safari to avoid forcing users to activate plug-ins.

Safari 10 also include the feature for loading the page with the installed plugins activated to give the users additional choices for controlling the content that’s displayed. The developer added that betas of

Safari 10 for OS X Yosemite and El Capitan will be available later this summer.

This move sees Apple following in the footsteps of Google, Microsoft and Mozilla. Google has already started blocking Flash adverts, and the firm announced that its Chrome browser will block Flash by default later this year except for a whitelist of top 10 websites like YouTube and Facebook.