The long awaited news of Java 6 on Leopard has finally been announced, albeit with little fan fare.

http://developer.apple.com/java/

They have released the preview version of it, meaning a final version should be coming soon. While I find this great news for those of us who do Java development on the Mac, and I find it even more intrigued by the fact that it makes special use of 64bit architecture. However, its that last part that worries me a bit. Apparently you HAVE to have a Core 2 Duo to use Java 6. So that means myself and two of my business partners Mac laptops will not be able to run Java 6. Now generally developers like to stay on the cutting edge at all times. But really, the Core duos are ONLY a year and a half old? That is NOT that old to have to upgrade.

So I guess we shall have to see how desperate the Java developers who use the Mac are. There was a slight alternative right now as well. Someone has ported the unix JDK6 to the Mac with almost complete functionality. (the URL of the site escapes me right now but I will post it when I find it)