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1. Rat-hole Mac Os Catalina
2. Rat-hole Mac Os X

Mac OS X is The World's Most Advanced Operating System! But this is exactly the kind of thinking that lets an OS crisis sneak up on you. I don't want to go down the rat-hole of programming.

1. The first distinct sign of a rat hole is the size of the entrance. The entrance will be roughly 2-4 inches in diameter and smooth and compacted from the rodents going in and out of the burrow. You’ll also notice fresh dirt just out of the entrance in a fan-shape created when the rodents excavate dirt from the hole.
2. Mac OS X My compile / edit / test cycle is in Eclipse, and when I’m happy I export a runnable jar with the required Apache libs embedded, so my starting point for packaging is the jar. Might be nice one day to have a task in Eclipse that just does the packaging, anyway no distractions tonight.
3. Made famous by the TWIT podcast Macbreak Weekly, a rat hole is when a discussion follows a constant tangent and ends up with a topic that has nothing to do with the original discussion. That discussion of Macs which changed into a discussion of classical music was quite the rat hole. By Steven Legault January 21, 2008.
4. Check out over 60 years of photos from the longest running show in the World. We will post show bikes and other Kool stuff so come back often and you might see your bike from the show or get inspired by some of the Best Bike builders in the World.

Why Apple?

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Contents

• Personal History 27 Sep 09
• Macintosh Hardware Compatibility 27 Sep 09
• PC Compatibility 27 Sep 09

Introduction

Why would anybody want to use an Apple computer when the 'world'uses Windows? Why indeed!

This page makes yet another attempt at answering that questionbut for starters, here is a short list:

• The Macintosh really does 'just work.' No bull, it's true.
• The Macintosh is currently free of any viruses, worms, adwareand spyware. There are a couple of trojans that do DNSredirections, but they require specific user actions andpermissions to install.
• The Macintosh is the only computer that will run Mac OS X,Windows (any flavor) or Linux (also any flavor).
• The Macintosh is priced the same or less than comparablehardware from ANY other manufacturer.
• The Macintosh is very reliable and stable

I'll go into more details on these major points later, butfirst, some personal history and a summary of my vantage point sothat you may see where I am coming from.

Personal History

I started programming in FORTRAN and Honeywell Assembly Language(EASY) at the USC computer center while I was still in high schoolin 1967. I used the IBM 1130 computer at Cal Poly through mycollege education. At that time, it was the ONLY digital computeron campus. I've used various timeshare services, mainframecomputers, workstations and personal computers during my workingcareer. I've programmed on the original 128K Macintosh in 1984 butdidn't buy my own until about 1990. I had been using an LSI-11running the UCSD p-system until then. Starting in about 1985, at mywork I used a combination of Macintosh and IBM PC computers untilthe IT department banished all Apple computers in favor of Wintelmachines in about 1997. Since then I've used PC's at work (NT, W2kand XP) and Macintosh's at home (System 6 through X). I've had alot of experience with almost every kind of computer and operatingsystem and many programming languages. Of them all, the Macintoshand OS X is clearly the best of the lot, and by a large margin.

If you just count usage hours in a day, I use Windows more thanthe Mac. This is because while I am at work, I don't have a choice.I have to use Windows. Further, a day doesn't go by without Windowsfinding some way to irritate me. Most folks at work have only usedWindows so that they seem resigned to the funny and often fatalbehavior. They just don't realize that there is a MUCH better way.Its the folks at work that use Macs at home that shake their headsin disbelief and disgust. At home, I don't have to put up withWindows, and I won't. Except for some minor enclaves of PC usage, Irun a Windows free zone at home.

We have had some Windows machines at home but none lasted verylong. We bought a PowerMac 6100 with a 486 card in it that coulddual boot Mac OS and DOS. It was used some, primarily for DOS gamesbut it eventually fell into disuse and was donated to a localschool. My wife bought a DEC laptop at a work surplus sale. I'm notsure why it fell aside, we still have it but it does not work. Mywife also bought a Compaq laptop but it got dropped early in it'slife and the display was destroyed. Compaq wanted $1800 to fix it.For awhile it served as desktop that my sons occasionally used toplay X-Com. It is banished from network connection because it's W95OS is so easily p0wnd by malware if it gets connected to thenetwork, even for a few minutes. It has since been scrapped. We dohave one new Windows laptop running Vista. My wife named it PITA(Pain In The Ass). She needed it to run a specific Windows centricpiece of software (ArcGIS) that would not install under Parallelson the Mac due to memory limitation on the early version ofParallels that she was using. We didn't have a copy of XP to usewith Boot Camp so we bought a Costco closeout Toshiba laptop thatmarginally served the purpose. That thing infuriates me, Vista is atrue POS.

When it comes to spending my own money on computer gear, I havechosen the Macintosh and I see absolutely no reason to change. TheMacintosh is better than the rest and getting even better all thetime. The large gap between OS X and Windows is widening as well asMicrosoft seems to have lost the ability to actually improve theirproduct. Windows just keeps getting bigger without gettingmaterially better. Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger) was released over 3 yearsago and it blows the doors off of Vista. Mac OS 10.5 Leopard wasreleased in October 2007. Leopard completely blows Vista (or XP forthat matter) away. Snow Leopard (10.6) was released in August 2009and it is smaller, lighter and faster than Leopard, but for theIntel architecture only.

Over the years, I have owned many Macintoshes. I keep them for along time, many of these I still have and all of but one of themstill works, or worked when I sold them or gave them away. In thetable below, BOL means Beginning Of Product Life and EOL means Endof Product Life.

That's 20 Macintosh computers for 6 people in about 18 years. Wewouldn't still be buying them if we didn't think that we weregetting our money's worth.

Satisfied Customers

The main reason that Apple survives and continues to grow isthat overall, it has a very satisfied customer base. Not everycustomer is satisfied however. For a variety of reasons, a fewfolks feel that Apple has not done them right and they leave.However, far more feel that the alternative has not done them rightand they turn to Apple. Most of these folks will stay with Apple,just as I have. Once someone has experienced satisfaction with aproduct, they are very likely to stay with that product. It doesn'tmatter if it is soap or computers, customer satisfaction andassociated brand loyalty is a very powerful force.

Mac users that proclaim their satisfaction with Apple are oftenderided as 'fanboys' who are smug and snobbish. These are the folksthat now know better and try to convince others, often with littleimpact as the Windows crowd simply doesn't believe them. Theirmessage gets grouped with reformed smokers, recovered alcoholicsand born again religious fanatics. Nonetheless, these folks have'seen the light' in some form or other and are trying to spread theword even though it may not be well received. I also think thatfolks that are not yet converted may not want to believe thatthey've been throwing money down a rat hole or are stillcomfortable with what they know. Eventually, many of them willturn.

It Just Works

The main reason to buy a Macintosh is that it just works, atleast most of the time. In virtually every way, Mac OS is easier touse and more reliable than Windows. However, sometimes someMacintoshes become unstable, usually due to a bad file, a baddirectory or hardware problems. The file and directory problems areusually relatively easy to fix, see Fixing aCranky Mac. Hardware issues can happen to any computer, butseem to impact Macintoshes less, probably due to better qualityhardware used in the first place.

There is currently no serious malware threat so users don't haveto take any special precautions. There is no worry about surfing toa 'bad' web site, NONE of them can do anything bad to a Macintosh.There are a few trojans floating around but these REQUIRE that theuser download something and then give explicit permission toinstall it. The user usually is the weakest link.

The Macintosh comes with an extensive suite of consumer softwarethat, in each case, is superior to anything that you can get on aPC. It DOES NOT come with a full up version of Microsoft Office,but you can buy Office or use the open source alternatives inOpenOffice or NeoOffice.

The Mac doesn't get wrapped up in it's own shorts like a PCdoes. The memory map doesn't become stale so that daily or weeklyreboots are necessary just to 'clean things up.' A Mac can run formonths without requiring a reboot. Reboots are only reallynecessary after some system upgrades. System wide crashes are rareand are usually most often caused by defective hardware.Applications may individually crash, sometimes due to applicationspecific bugs, but other applications will not be impacted. The MacOS also doesn't leave temporary files scattered about that need tobe removed to clean up the disk. Timed utility programsautomatically run to clean out old and unneeded log files. Diskdeframentation is not needed at all as the OS defragments on thefly.

There is a feature called SpotLight that automatically indexesall the content and metadata for every file on the disk. Thisallows very fast and extensive searches of the entire disk contentsso that 'lost' stuff can be found.

New hardware is easy to add. Most FireWire and USB devices don'teven need drivers. Your average 2 button scroll wheel mouse willwork just by plugging it in. Most other peripheral equipment isjust as easy to add.

Updates to the system software are issued every few months. Forthose with broadband internet connections, these are deliveredautomatically via the internet although an administrator mustauthorize their installation.

Users can be defined with limited or administrator privileges.Users can add application to their own user space, but cannotinstall anything system wide, nor damage the system even bymistake. Administrators can install system wide applications buthave to go to extraordinary lengths to do damage to the system.It'll never happen by accident.

There seems to be a perception among some PC users that the Macis 'too easy' and therefore somehow a less macho machine. Afterusing PC's for years at work, I don't mind the OS looking out formy interests at all. I'll take all the help I can get. I don't needa machine that hassles me at nearly every turn, I just want to getstuff done. Besides, if I want to get down and dirty, the unixcommand line capability goes FAR beyond what can be done inWindows. An OS doesn't have to be hard to use to be powerful at thesame time.

Macintosh Software

For a long time, a myth has been told that 'you can't get anysoftware for a Mac.' This could not be further from the truth.There are only a few major PC titles that aren't available on theMacintosh. However, the major productivity tools are available. Atextra cost, you can get:

• Microsoft Office
• Photoshop
• Quark Express
• thousands of others including major games

Further, there are very significant tools that are available onthe Mac only that have NO comparable tool for Windows except atextreme cost:

• Final Cut (pro movie production)
• Final Cut Express (semi-pro movie production)
• Aperture (pro photography)
• Logic Studio (pro music creation)
• Shake (pro digital compositing)

What is even more important is the software that comes withevery new Macintosh. This suite, iLife, is preinstalled. There areapplications that do these things (at extra cost) for the PC, butnone of them are nearly as good.

• iTunes
• GarageBand (consumer music creation)
• iMovie (consumer movie editing)
• iPhoto (consumer still photo editing and organization)
• iDVD (consumer DVD creation)

There is also an $80 office suite for the Macintosh callediWork.

• Pages (word processing and page layout)
• Numbers (spreadsheet)
• Keynote (presentation)

Neither Pages or Numbers are as heavyweight as Word or Excel,but they are MUCH easier to use than the Office applications andthey do the job most of the time. Keynote just crushes PowerPointin every way. All of these applications will read AND write Officefile formats.

Macintosh Hardware Compatibility

Apple users quickly become accustomed to just plugging in a newpiece of hardware and finding that it works with no hassle and nodriver installations. The Mac OS simply knows about all this stuffand mice, memory cards, jump drives, disk drives (formatted HFS+,FAT32 or NTFS), hubs and most other stuff can be accessedimmediately without any bother at all.

Printers are an exception, drivers are usually needed. SnowLeopard typically installs drivers only for common printers or onesthat the user has added in the past. If a new printer is presentedto it, it will say so and then offer to find the driver, downloadit from the internet and install it on the spot. That adds anotherminute or two, but then the printer is installed and ready togo.

Displays sometimes require a hardware adaptor to adapt the videointerface of the particular display to whatever video port thatthat model of Macintosh has. However, once the right port isphysically available, the display will add right on. You can add asmany displays as you have ports for.

Monopolies

Microsoft was, in part, able to penetrate 90% or so of thecomputer market with a marginal product and monopolistic behavior.They've paid big time fines and suffered some injunctions but theyhave the power to push right through these annoyances and they'vemade it difficult for alternatives to survive.

Obtaining a near monopoly is much easier than obtaining acomplete monopoly. In any given population, there will be a portionof that population that will not be budged. I call this the 90/10rule. Getting the first 90% takes considerable effort, legal orotherwise. Many monopolies have done this. Standard Oil, AT&T,DeBeers and Microsoft among others have achieved a near monopoly.Getting that last 10% is vastly harder. There is always a portionof the population who hates your guts and will not deal with you atall. Governments actually step in once in a while as Standard Oiland AT&T (the original one) discovered. Even Microsoft has hadlegal pressure applied, although not hard enough, that has causedit to back off some. DeBeers seems to be hanging tough althoughtheir time will probably come.

The computer market is big enough so that a 10% share can bedivided up among several other viable companies so that they canall survive and continue develop new products. Apple has managed tosurvive and be profitable with a 2% market share for many yearsalthough recently this share is larger, around 10% and growing.

As time goes on, Apple's market share will grow, as will theshare held by Linux even though Linux hardly counts in the officialmarket share numbers. Most Linux machines start life with Windowspre-installed and therefore count as Windows market share.

Microsoft will continue to be a large player in the personal andenterprise computer market although their dominance will diminishover time. It would be best for all parties to have sufficientclout so that no one party can exert the illegal force thatMicrosoft got so good at.

Cost

There has been a perception that Macs cost more than PC's. Thisis true if you compare a Macintosh to a $399 WalMart PC. However,look a little deeper and you'll find that for equivalent hardwareand software, a Macintosh usually costs less than a similar Dell orHP and the Mac comes with far better software. You won't find WiFi,DVD burners, high speed dual core CPUs, Bluetooth and many othergoodies in a bargain PC. Apple simply chooses NOT to participate inthe low end market where there is little profit so the entry costto a new Macintosh is higher than a PC.

There have been many studies completed that show that a Mac anda Dell (or HP) computer configured in a similar way have similarcosts, with the Mac usually being cheaper by some small amount.However, this doesn't tell the story in two ways.

The upside is that the Mac comes with MUCH better softwarepre-installed, there aren't even good equivalents to iLife in thePC world. Mac OS X is far better than Windows (pick any version ofWindows, they are all pretty much the same except for eyecandy).

The Mac also comes in FAR fewer versions that you can selectfrom in the PC world. While a Mac compares very well withPARTICULAR configurations of a PC that match (or at leastapproximate) features, there are large gaps in price and featuresin the Mac line from one model to the next. There are lots of PCconfigurations that can fill those 'gaps' at a lower cost than thenext better Mac version and still have better features than thenext lower Mac version. Also, since many manufacturers participatein the PC world, you will find that you can probably find a goodmatch to exactly your desired feature set in a PC. The PCmanufacturers also often configure some systems for a mass marketand market a few models below the cost of a similarly configuredcustom configuration, however usually with lower quality hardware.If you must have a particular combination of widgets you probablywon't find that exact combination in a Mac. You might find that toget a certain level of graphic support, for example, you might haveto get more other stuff than you really wanted at additionalcost.

PC Compatibility

Until January 2006, Apple computers used the IBM PowerPCprocessor. While the PC world derides the PPC, it is a damn goodCPU. However, IBM wasn't going in the direction that Apple wantedto in terms of power consumption. Apple had run a secret operationfor years where an Intel version of OS X was in development inparallel with the released PPC version of the OS. When Appledecided to formally switch, it took them 216 days to complete thetransition. Backwards compatibility was maintained for almost allapplications that ran on OS X although compatibility with OS 9 andearlier was dropped.

Since the Macintosh is a PC inside, it can run PC software.There are currently three ways to run PC software on a Macintosh.The Macintosh actually runs MORE software than a PC does as it willrun every Mac title (released for any version of OS X and everytitle compatible with XP SP2 or later. Most titles released forWindows versions earlier than XP SP2 will run in Parallels orVMWare Fusion under some earlier version of Windows or DOS.

There are 3 ways to run PC software on a Mac. Two of themrequire that you bring your own (preferably legal) copy of Windowsto the party.

1. Boot Camp. Boot Camp is Apple's version of a dual bootsolution. Boot Camp prepares an Intel Macintosh to dual bootWindows. When booted under Windows, it is in every way a PC.Windows lives on its own partition of the disk. Some claim that itis a better PC than a traditional PC. You have to bring your owncopy of XP SP2 or Vista.

2. Virtualization

   • Parallels. Parallels is a Macintosh application thatenables the virtualization capability of the Intel Core family ofprocessors. With Parallels, an alternate operating system bootswithin a window in the Mac OS. In this case, there is no diskpartitioning, the alternate OS lives in a file that represents thealternate disk.

     Using Parallels, files can be dragged and dropped between theMac OS and the alternate OS. The clipboard is maintained duringtransitions. The alternate OS is selected simply by clicking on theParallels window. Then the focus is on the alternate OS and allmouse and keyboard activity go to the alternate OS. Click anywhereoutside the Parallels window to return focus to the Mac OS.

     I've used the term 'alternate OS' to describe the visualized OSbecause it can be DOS, any version of Windows, or Linux. Parallelsis not restricted to XP SP2.

   • VMWare is another virtual machine system that workspretty much the same as Parallels.

3. Crossover. Crossover does Windows compatibility in adifferent way. Crossover emulates the Windows APIs so that a copyof Windows isn't even needed. An exe file is simply double clickedand it runs without Windows. Not all Windows applications work withCrossover, but the major ones, such as MS Office, do. If anapplication makes a direct hardware call or bypasses the standardAPIs in any way, it won't run under Crossover.

Security

Security is a big issue in the Windows world. Depending on whoyou believe, there are 100,000 to 200,000 types of malware outthere waiting to infect a PC. A PC unprotected by some kind of 3rdparty security software will be infected in minutes of it's firstinternet connection even if the user does nothing at all.

This situation doesn't exist on the Macintosh. There are lots ofexplanations for why there are ZERO serious exploits out there inthe wild but I think that it is because the unix underpinnings ofthe Mac OS are just more fundamentally secure than Windows. Thereare more than 20 million Mac users on the net, the Macintosh is notobscure. In Vista's first week of beta testing, there were only10,000 copies out there, but there was already malware thatattacked it. Even the released version of Vista is successfullyattacked and owned by hackers.

There ought to be some malware that attacks the Mac OS in thewild, but there is none and it's been 6 years. There have been somelaboratory level attacks demonstrated, but these all require a userinteraction to let it happen. Further, Apple has patched all theseexploit paths.

There are some trojans released recently that do what they canto redirect the user to other web sites than what they wanted.These have to be explicitly downloaded by the user, executed by theuser and provided an administrator password by the user before theycan do anything. Even at that, they don't really 'infect' thesystem, they just run like any other application and can be easilydefeated.

Apple is continually issuing Security Updates to patch potentialexploits so the the system is clearly not bullet proof or thepatches would not be required. It's just that none of thesepotential exploits can result in mass infections and Apple is aheadof the power curve and closing them off before they are discoveredby the bad guys. Someday, someone may successfully pull off anexploit. When this happens, it'll get patched and life will go on.In the meantime, the Mac OS is, for all practical purposes,immune.

Apple's Business Plan

There are many makers of PC's. Some are pretty mainstream likeDell and HP. Some are speciality houses like AlienWare. Each ofthese manufacturers is trying to fill some niche, big or small.There is LOTs of variety of PC hardware out there. As soon as somecomponent manufacturer released a new part, it'll find it's wayinto some piece of hardware and the PC user can buy it.

Apple is one company, granted a fairly large one, but it is justone company. Apple cannot be all things to all people so that itdoesn't try to make hardware to fit every niche. It picks themarkets that it wants to address and carefully releases only a fewmodels. It realizes that there are some potential customers thatwant something different from the few models offered. Applerealizes that it will cost them too much to satisfy everybody sothey simply try to satisfy the majority. Offering only a few modelsallows Apple to achieve economies of scale such that the customersthat are satisfied are well satisfied at a reasonable cost. Applecan provide better quality hardware at lower cost by limiting therange of models offered.

Currently, there are only 5 computer product lines, the Mac Mini(which may go away soon), the Mac Book, the MacBook Pro, the iMacand the Mac Pro. There are two or three sub models of each majortype. One could argue that the iPhone and Apple TV are Macintoshcomputers as well, however, these fall into another class, theembedded device. These are general purpose computers hiding behindsome specific application. If one of the offered models doesn'tsuit your needs or desires, then you're not going to want an Apple.Apple is currently not targeting the enterprise sector at all,Apple concentrates on the consumer sector. There is a plenty largeenough market in consumer computers to make Apple a large andprofitable player. Apple also concentrates on the mid to high endrange of products, the ones that can support a reasonable profitmargin. It does not offer lower end hardware at all so if you arelooking for a $300 Wal-Mart special, look elsewhere.

Windows Killers

There seems to be some recurring theme in the Linux world about'killing' Microsoft. Microsoft may also feel that it has to 'kill'everybody else to succeed, but this doesn't mean that this is agood plan for anybody. It won't be possible and not even desirableto kill Microsoft and Windows. Microsoft has it's place, it justneeds to be cut down to size and this will probably happen.Microsoft doesn't have to die for Linux or Mac OS to succeed.MicroSoft just needs to realize that they will have to play fair.In time, they will have to. Competition is good. As long as openstandards are followed for data, disk, and communications formats,everybody can play. The best software will garner support, theweakest will die.

Monocultures

Monocultures are generally bad in almost all things. Weaknessesin the culture can result in disasters. Recall the Irish potatofamine of the 1840's. Ireland was too dependent on primarily onekind of potato and a blight killed almost all of the food crop inmere months.

Malware is so prevalent in the WinTel world because of theMicrosoft monoculture. There are too many similar targets that aresusceptible to similar attacks. If there were more Linux, Mac OS Xand other BSD unix OS's out there in use, then it would be moredifficult for any given malware to bring down the world's computingresources. Some of these will survive any given attack. It would bebetter if the world's computers relied on a broader spectrum ofoperating systems to make the consequence of widespread infectionsless severe.

Why Not Apple?

Why not? There are lots of claimed reasons but only a few holdany water. One cannot claim a performance issue as Macs have everybit of the CPU smoke as a PC. The MacPro is the ONLY 3 GHz 8 coremachine that you can buy as of this writing. It's not cheap at $4k,but it has 8 cores and supports the fastest GPU's out there. TheiMac family with a Core 2 Duo has more CPU horsepower than mostusers can dream of using. I have an older Core Duo iMac and it is arare time indeed that I top out the CPU. The cost issue doesn'twork either unless you really want cheap POS computer that won'tlast.

Sunk Investment. If a user has a large investment in PCsoftware, especially in the form of business applications anddatabases, then there might not be too much advantage of using aMacintosh unless it was booted into Windows or running a visualizedWindows.

Games. There are far more game titles on the PC than onthe Mac. Most of the good ones are available on the Mac, but themajority of game titles are PC specific.

Hardware Configuration. If one of the few availableMacintosh models doesn't meet your requirements for the specifichardware included, then you need to buy your hardware elsewhere....and put up with Windows.

DIY. Those that want to build their own system and modifyit piecemeal over it's life will not like the Macintosh. All butthe MacPro are essentially closed systems that cannot be easilyupgraded with new hardware. RAM can be added by the user, but thatis about it. The MacPro is easily user configurable, but it ispretty expensive too.

Cameras. Virtually all Macintosh models now come withiSight cameras built in. If your environment does not allow acamera, then you cannot use a Macintosh. Many government agenciesand government contractors do not allow cameras of any sort, muchless ones that can do video built right into the computer.

Wireless. All Macintosh models come with built in WiFi,most with BlueTooth too. Like a camera, if your environment doesnot allow radio emissions, or even radio hardware installed, thenyou'll need to find another computer.

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This page has been accessed times since 2 Jun 07

© 2007-2009 George Schreyer
Created 2 June 07
Last Updated September 27, 2009

Tonight I have 2 hours free. It’s time to pull together the various snippets of info and manual tasks I’ve been following to build my app that runs on Mac OS X and Windows desktops and engineer a script I can just run each time.

The tools: first javafxpackager. https://docs.oracle.com/javafx/2/deployment/packager.htm

Rat-hole Mac Os Catalina

I’ve used this partially to build the windows executable but am using manually built ant script for Mac OS and manually signing everything in the bundle messy. Let’s sort that first.

Mac OS X

My compile / edit / test cycle is in Eclipse, and when I’m happy I export a runnable jar with the required Apache libs embedded, so my starting point for packaging is the jar. Might be nice one day to have a task in Eclipse that just does the packaging, anyway no distractions tonight.

I’m using jdk 7 still on the Mac and javafxpackager is nowhere to be found. First hurdle. The hunt begins, firstly Oracle tell me it’s included in the version of the jdk I’m running, 7.0.6. Aha it’s been renamed javapackager – nope that’s not there either. Sod it, let’s update to the latest jdk 7 – not ready to go to 8 yet. Hmm, still no packager. Pokes about a bit and sees in /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines there’s a few versions of the sdk now including 7u71, the most recent. Checks it out and the 7u6 I think I’m running and lo and behold there’s javafxpackager in both. OK so where is Mac OS X picking the SDK up from, or more importantly where _should_ it be picking it up from.

And voila more learnings! Short answer is ensure JAVA_HOME is set preferably using /usr/libexec/java_home to choose. Now javac reports it’s using the jdk I just installed. OK but still no javafxpackager in the default path. Henceforth it shall be known as $JAVA_HOME/bin/javafxpackager ….

Rat-hole Mac Os X

Back to the job in hand, how do I go from a runnable jar to a signed .app with an embedded jre and a suitably signed installer pkg? javafxpackager -deploy appears to be the way, or it’s equivalent using ant, which might be more extensible and usable going forward. $JAVA_HOME/lib/ant-javafx.jar is your friend at this point. 30 minutes reading and researching later I think the 2 hours tonight isn’t going to be enough …..

Prototyping using the command line, the following generated a usable .app

javafxpackager -deploy -srcfiles ./DrumScoreEditor-Community-1.00.jar -outdir ./outdir -outfile DrumScoreEditor -native image -appclass org.whiteware.DrumScoreEditor -name Drum Score Editor

Seemed to strip out the Quicktime libraries that Apple reject your app store submission for, but can’t find a way to get it to sign everything for me yet, nor produce a .pkg (signed or otherwise). Using -native installer produced a well put together dmg with a typical ‘drag to /Applications’ image – nice but doesn’t help for the app store.

More when I have another 2 hours …..