SAN FRANCISCO - Sun has two new focuses for its Java technology - Apple and the world of computer games, according to the company's chief.
In his keynote address here to kick off the start of the fifth JavaOne conference, Sun Chairman CEO Scott McNealy was joined on stage by two special guests - Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Shoichiro Irimajiri, vice chairman of Sega Enterprises.
McNealy's two guests provided the main news in a rather downbeat keynote where the Sun head spent most of his time looking back at Java's five-year history, with, of course, a few of his trademark digs at bitter rival Microsoft.
To huge applause, Apple's Jobs announced that his company is now "totally committed" to Sun's Java. Apple intends to bundle Java with every copy of the next major release of its Macintosh operating system, version 10, due out later this year, Jobs said.
"We will offer the best Java platform on the planet right out of the box," Jobs said.
Both Jobs and Sun's McNealy admitted that the two companies hadn't worked closely together in the past. "I know some of you have not been thrilled with Java on the Mac," Jobs said. "We've finally figured out how to work with each other."
At several points during his keynote address, McNealy mentioned the necessity for Java to be used more in the games and general entertainment market. Sega's Irimajiri said that his company had experienced problems with Java in the past. "We tried to deploy Java and had some difficulty," he said.
At the show, Irimajiri announced that Sega's Dreamcast console will be running Java. In September, in Version 3 of Dreamcast, Sega will release a Web browser, which is currently under development by PlanetWeb. The browser uses Sun's Personal Java, which will facilitate the playing of multiplayer games, Irimajiri added.
The Sega vice chairman also referred to yesterday's announcement with Motorola concerning offering games on cellular phones.
"We have already developed 10 games for the cell phone and will launch them next year," Irimajiri said. "You'll have Sonic gameplay on cell phones."
Sun, based in Palo Alto, can be reached at 650-960-1300 or via the Internet at www.sun.com/.
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