Interestingly, one of the coworkers is getting ready to buy one of those fancy-shmancy new Windows laptops despite the fact that he's already got a fancy-shmancy new Mac laptop. I asked why bother given that all of our development tools (Eclipse, Sun's Java tools, etc) all run cross-platform. Turns out they don't ALL run cross-platform. Sun never bothered to release a non-Windows version of their mobile J2ME development tools.
Seems rather odd that Sun, a company that not only manufactures both a computer and an operating system that compete directly with Microsoft but also prides itself in the cross-platform nature of its technologies would suddenly release tools that run exclusively on an OS made by a company that. . .
- Sun competes with directly
- Sun regularly sues for their habit of being anticompetative
- Sun constantly complains about refusing to embrace alternative OS's like theirs
As an analogy, imagine if Chrysler suddenly started to make a line of replacement parts that only fit their competitor's Chevy Corvette, then at the same time discontinued their own line of replacement parts for Chrysler PT Cruisers.
The only conclusion you can reach is that Sun is really not interested in success anymore and is now interested in making their competitors more successful. Sun officially has no friggin' idea what it's doing anymore. They're doomed.