Apple released Java 5 for OS X today. (Also known confusingly as both “Java 2 SE 5.0 Release 1” by Apple and as Java 1.5 to Java developers who are used to the 1.x versioning scheme.) It only runs on OS X 10.4 Tiger, so that’s a good enough reason by itself for Java developers on Mac to get Tiger. Of course, there’s tons of other reasons like Spotlight, Automator, Dashboard, etc.
Eclipse runs fine on it, with the exception of starting it from Spotlight. But just start it from Finder, command line, or the Dock and you’ll be fine.
Thanks to Marcello for pointing this out on the Eclipse-Mac group
Let’s hope they’ll bring it out as a regular software update also for pre-Tiger versions of OS X?! I mean, if they didn’t, that would be pretty bad for application developers.
As has been stated by Apple many, many times, Java 1.5 will never be made available for anything prior to 10.4.
yet there is some possibility to make it work on 10.3, even if the solution is far from perfect… I did it myself… (in italian) http://magomarcelo.blogspot.com/2005/05/ok-ci-abbiamo-provato.html