A while back I released an application in Java. While I targetted it for Java 6, I realized that there was a significant Macintosh user base. At the time, Apple had not gotten around to creating a JRE 6 for their users, so I had to make the application compatible with both Java 5 and 6.
Now I've returned to that project and realize that I can't support those users any more; Sun won't let me download the JDK 5 anymore because it's end of life. So I'm caught at a crossroads; as far as I can tell, PPC Mac users still don't have a JRE 6 to use.
So I ask this question: How do I resolve this predicament? I still want to support those users, but I simply don't have a JDK with which to build. Has Apple released a JRE 6 for their PPC users? Is there an alternate way to get JDK 5 (other than becoming a business member of Sun)? Is there some alternative recommendation to supporting these users?
Regards, -- Shirik
EDIT: Some additional info, if Apple has released Java 6 for PPC, how easy is it to get? I ask this because I'm still constantly seeing logs from my users which indicate PPC architecture with a Java 5 VM.
You can download Java 5 from Sun. You just have to look in the right place.
http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/previous.jsp - J2SE 5.0, 1.4.2, 1.3.1
http://java.sun.com/products/archive/ - all releases going back to JDK 1.1
Note that these are all existing public releases. The material you got from Sun would have said there would be no new public releases of Java 5.0. They were pointing out that if you needed patches for recently discovered security issues and other bug fixes for Java 5.0 etc, you would have to pay for them.
Obviously, JDKs for Apple platforms are not available from Sun, but this is nothing to do with the fact that Sun have "end-of-lifed" Java 5.0. The fact is that they have never been available from Sun ...
Having said that, in the long term you need to be able to migrate your application to Java 6.0, 7.0 (due out later this year) and so on. At some point you are going to have to draw the line and say "sorry ... no more updates" for the shrinking number of users with old PPC and 32-bit Intel Macs.