OpenJDK 7 for Mac OS X
Landon Fuller has announced that OpenJDK7 is now runnable on Mac OS X (and the BSDs) as part of the OpenJDK BSD Port project, culminating the efforts of his SoyLatte project to bring the latest open-source JDK to the Mac. "The move to OpenJDK -- and Sun's re-licensing of the code under the GPL license -- opens the project to any interested contributor." He suggests there's more work to do with JCK conformance testing, enabling dtrace support, PowerPC and ARM support via the Zero project, Core Audio-based sound support, and more. To facilitate user testing, Landon has also posted OpenJDK 7 binaries for Darwin (and, by extension, for Mac OS X).
  (Aug 21, 2008)

Swing applications and Mac OS X menu bar
Kirill Grouchnikov's blog has some pointers for using Swing applications and Mac OS X menu bar. "Every once in a while i get questions on using the Mac OS X menu bar for Swing applications running under Substance look-and-feel. This refers to the apple.laf.useScreenMenuBar VM flag that is respected by the native Aqua look-and-feel (and its third-party Quaqua extension). Up until this week the only advice that i could give was to use AWT menus (thanks to Quaqua’s author Werner Randelshofer for this). However, it is not the optimal solution for cross-platform Swing applications that wish to use Swing menus on non-Mac platform As i was thinking about this problem after being recently contacted by Sergiy Michka, i thought about an alternative solution which was later reviewed by Swing lead for Apple VM Mike Swingler."

Running VisualVM on MacOS X
The Aquarium points out a tip for Running VisualVM on MacOS X: "I wrote about VisualVM yesterday (entry) but I had missed Octavian's Introduction where he gives instructions on how to use VisualVM on MacOS X. As a reminder, to run the VisualVM client you need a recent JVM, so you will need to use the latest JVM from Apple, but the app can run in a variety of JVMs, remote or local to VisualVM. VisualVM can even save the data into a snapshot and process it offline."

Java SE 6 for Mac OS X 10.5.2
Available via Software Update, Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 1 adds Java SE 6 version 1.6.0_05 to your Mac. This version of Java is only for Mac OS X v10.5.2 and later, and only runs on 64-bit Intel machines. Developers may want to check out the release notes, which detail major new features including an API to work with the Dock icon (getting and setting the image, adding a badge, setting a dock menu, etc.), the ability to provide document-modal dialog sheets, support for Java DTrace probes, AppleScript as a supported language to the javax.script API, and more.
  (Apr 29, 2008)

Java ME "Hello World" on iPhone
Hinkmond Wong has posted a blog apparently showing Java ME running on the iPhone SDK. Along with a screenshot of the iPhone emulator showing a Java ME version string and "Hello World" output, he writes, "Here's something I'm working on with Chris Plummer and Dean Long for JavaOne this year. Chris recently was able to build our Java ME CDC/Foundation Profile platform on Darwin OS x86 (hmmm... Darwin OS... I wonder what that means... ;-) ) last weekend. (I think he started on Friday afternoon and was ready with it on Saturday). Faster than you can say, "Java ME rules!""

NetBeans, Ruby and AppleScript
In the NetBeans.tv screencast NetBeans, Ruby and AppleScript, Mac Developer Tips blogger John Muchow describes how to use NetBeans and rb-appscript (a bridge to connect Ruby to the Apple Event Manager) to control scriptable applications on a Mac. This introduction shows how you can get started using Ruby as an alternative to AppleScript for scripting applications on Mac OS X.

Sun to Bring Java to iPhone
"Sun Microsystems is developing a Java Virtual Machine for Apple's iPhone and plans to release the JVM some time after June, enabling Java applications to run on the popular mobile device," according an InfoWorld article. "The JVM is to be based on the Java Micro Edition (ME) version of Java, said Eric Klein, vice president of Java marketing at Sun, on Friday afternoon. Apple had not shown interest in enabling Java to run on the iPhone, but Sun plans to step in and do the job itself after having pondered Thursday's release of an SDK for the iPhone by Apple."

Rococoa
Offering a new route to using Cocoa classes in Mac Java applications, the new Rococoa project, "is a generic Java binding to the Mac Objective-C object system. It allows the creation and use of Objective-C objects in Java, and the implementation of Objective-C interfaces in Java." Using JNA to quickly wrap Objective-C calls, the project initially started as a QTKit wrapper to expose QuickTime functionality, Rococoa examples of which are provided on a QuickTime page. Fair warning from the project owner, though: "Rococoa is very much work in progress. Much is subject to change. A lot isn't good enough not to change. But given the recent deprecation of the Java-Cocoa bridge, it's the best I've got. Just mind your head. And please give feedback."

Quaqua Look and Feel 4.1
The Quaqua Look and Feel project for Mac OS X has released version 4.1. "The Quaqua Look and Feel is a user interface library for Java applications which wish to closely adhere to the Apple Human Interface Guidelines for Mac OS X," automatically switching between appropriate looks for the Tiger, Panther, and Jaguar versions of OS X, and providing Swing implementations of NSBrowser and NSSheet. "Version 4.1 includes a FileChooserUI which roughly simulates the native file dialogs in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Except for panel backgrounds and frame borders, Quaqua still uses the Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger design."