Note: With the release of ColdFusion
MX 6.1, Macromedia has merged the ColdFusion
MX for J2EE edition with ColdFusion MX Enterprise.
As a result, the features specific to ColdFusion
MX for J2EE are now available with ColdFusion
MX Enterprise.
Macromedia and Apple announced today that
JRun
4 and ColdFusion MX for J2EE Application
Servers are now available for the Apple
Macintosh OS X platform. Macromedia
authoring and design products have always
supported the Mac OS X platform—indeed,
several Macromedia products, such as Director
and FreeHand, began their lives exclusively
on Mac OS. More recently, design and development
tools like Macromedia Flash MX, Dreamweaver
MX, Director MX, FreeHand, and Fireworks
MX became popular with Mac OS X users.
Macromedia has fully embraced
Mac OS X as an authoring and design platform,
and now has become one of the very first companies
to support it as a server platform as well. In fact,
JRun 4 is now the only fully-compliant J2EE application
server commercially available for Mac OS
X.
Both JRun 4 and ColdFusion MX for J2EE Application
Servers are immediately available for download from
the Macromedia
Worldwide Store. JRun 4 is available in both
developer and full commercial editions. ColdFusion
MX is
available
in a developer edition only, which means it will
be fully functional for 30 days and then become
limited
to local development (the local IP and one additional
IP address) only. The JRun commercial edition is
$899 per CPU,
while both JRun and ColdFusion MX for J2EE developer
editions are available for free.
My background
I started using a Mac almost immediately after Apple
introduced Mac OS X, and I am currently on my fourth
machine (the new Powerbooks are my current choice).
I switched from using both Linux and Windows side-by-side
to get all the functionality I needed day-to-day on
a single machine. As a development manager, I needed
to be able to write code in a Unix environment and
read Microsoft Word documents or Excel spreadsheets
without switching to an entirely different computer.
I could go from a command line where I was compiling
MySQL or running Apache to a PowerPoint presentation
in a single keystroke.
The only thing I relied on a second machine for
was running JRun and ColdFusion MX. Although working
with
remote servers through a Mac terminal is fairly
convenient, my development platform was not entirely
self-contained and portable. Now with JRun and ColdFusion
MX for Mac OS X, however, I can have all
of my favorite development tools and applications
on a single machine. And since it's a Powerbook,
I can take it anywhere.
Of course I was not the only developer to figure
this out. It seemed as though shiny new Macs
would appear every week on the desks of programmers
and system administrators who, for years, had been
sitting in
front
of drab and dusty UNIX workstations. When I first
saw Macromedia developers in their cubes and offices,
I was astonished by the number of Titanium Powerbooks
and G4 Power Macintosh computers they were using
for
development. In fact, thanks to the determination
of Dick
Applebaum and others in the Mac community who
worked to get the first unofficial port of ColdFusion
MX to run on Mac OS X, many developers both inside
and outside of Macromedia have already been developing
ColdFusion MX applications on their Macs for several
months.
Cross-platform server products from Macromedia
Part of what makes Macromedia server products cross-platform
is the fact that ColdFusion MX is implemented almost
entirely in Java, running inside the JRun application
server. The Java-based architecture simplifies the
process of porting these server products but still
gives our developers freedom and flexibility. Java
developers can now take advantage of the same extensive
set of features and functionality that ColdFusion
developers have been enjoying for years, while still
being able to leverage their existing Java infrastructures.
Additionally, Java developers will feel more comfortable
working in a familiar environment and being able
to
use servlets, Java objects, or JSPs.
The integration advantage
The thing that makes the Mac such a great development
platform is what I call the integration advantage,
which is
clearly evident in the Macromedia and Apple product
lines. Apple combines the power and stability
of UNIX
with an innovative user interface and top-notch hardware
to create an extremely user-friendly and sophisticated
computing platform. According to Apple, these factors
make OS X the most
widely distributed UNIX-based operating system
in the world.
Similarly, Macromedia MX products enable
developers easily to combine rich, interactive
Macromedia
Flash–based user interfaces with both the robust
extensibility of JRun and the user-friendly functionality
of ColdFusion
MX to create next-generation Rich
Internet Applications. UNIX combined with
Mac OS running Macromedia MX development tools
provide
a smooth, integrated development environment that
none of these could provide alone.
User experience is a concept usually reserved for
end-users of applications rather than the developers
of those applications. Because Macromedia builds
tools and technology to empower the development community,
however, designers and developers are our
end-users. Part of a developer's user experience
means
that he or she has the freedom to choose a development
platform that maximizes productivity without sacrificing
usability, performance, or reliability. Applications
are all about user experience, but at Macromedia
we believe that the user experience starts with the
developer. As Al Ramadan, executive
vice president
of marketing at Macromedia, explains in his Logged
In column, experience
matters.
The user experience concept has become more familiar
to me during my time at Macromedia. As both an application
end-user and an application developer, I have always
expected a positive user experience; however, my
criteria for a positive user experience have changed.
As an end-user, I expected ease of use, convenience,
intuitiveness; as a developer, I expected performance,
reliability, flexibility, and functionality. Now
I
expect all of these things, no matter what I'm working
on.
Macromedia and Apple are making that experience
possible.
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