Apple Released the New Java 2 Platform Standard Edition (J2SE) 5.0 Release 1

last Friday along with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger since it needs Tiger to work. But should you install it? Apple says:

The Java 2 Platform Standard Edition (J2SE) 5.0 Release 1 software update provides support for cross-platform J2SE 5.0 applications and J2SE 5.0-based applets in Safari on Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger."

This update does not change the default version of Java on your Mac from Java 1.4.2 to J2SE 5.0, though Java applications that require J2SE 5.0 may specifically request it. If you want to change the default Java version for applications and applets, use the new Java Preferences utility that is installed by the J2SE 5.0 update at /Applications/Utilities/Java/J2SE 5.0/.

So, we downloaded and installed Apple's Java 2 SE v5.0 Release 1 with no apparent problems. Unfortunately, that did not fix the Java problems we are having with Safari noted in the article above. We are now equipped if we need to run Java 2 applications or applets in Safari--but we are not using Safari until its Java problems are fixed. [Bill Fox]