Yes, you are correct. Nobody drive Pintos anymore — they explode. BluRay uses Java — which doesn’t cause any deaths.

Well BluRay is a pretty small dot on the radar. But what about approximately 1 billion phones that will sell this year that have Java capabilities? Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung, LG, NEC, Sharp have all standardised on J2ME, the mobile Java version to support over the air mobile application download. To not support Java means to alienate thousands of mobile application developers. Heck, even most Windows Mobile devices ship with a J2ME emulator. Not having downloadable app capabilities is the iPhone’s Achilles heal and Jobs knows this. He’s just covering up so people don’t notice this weak spot, but it’s as obvious for anyone with a keen eye as the DRM is flawed in iTunes. All part of the big plan.

I have to agree with Kevin… The comment was relative to Java applets on websites, not Java as a technology. I think Adobe would be annoyed if they were considered “nobody” for using Java for ColdFusion, JRun, Flash Media Server and Flash Data Services.

Hey Danny,
I put up a post about this recently also. I feel the same way you do, in that Jobs made a response which he didn’t qualify (and easily could have), and individuals following that conversation who are not so enlightened as to know the subtleties of a java applet in a browser versus an entire language/framework for an entire device – their assumption might be that Java wouldn’t be on the phone at all, and Java must be dead and is yesterdays news since “Jobs said so”.
I also felt that Markoff and Pogue could have done a better job in their interviews by taking Jobs to task on some of these answers, if at least just to qualify the responses for the readers of their columns/blogs, etc.
Just my two cents. – Rob

My dog’s name is Java.

Pinto means “dick” in portuguese. Realize: “Nobody drives dicks anymore”. Thanks, this made my day happier.

Seriously, this thread started 2 years ago and even today IPhone 3gs still doesn’t have java and neither broken Sun launched the Iphone JVM they promised one year ago.

Jobs knows exactly Javas market share. Hes’ wet dream is developers building Iphone exclusive applications (ie, runs only on it). That’s why he doesn’t want java there.