A Powerful User Experience: ColdFusion MX and JRun 4 for
Mac OS X
On January 7th 2003, the day Steve Jobs gave his keynote at MacWorld in San Francisco, Macromedia released the very first J2EE application server for the world's most widely distributed UNIX platform, Mac OS X. In other words, Macromedia released JRun 4 and ColdFusion MX for Mac OS X. I know for a fact that we made a lot of people very happy because I watched the ColdFusion mailing lists and the Macromedia forums all day long, and because I received several personal emails, thanking me, thanking Macromedia, praising the decision, praising the technology. It was an important day for Macromedia server products, and a monumental day for Mac fans using them.
Most of the people excited about the news were people already running the "Linux hack." The “Linux hack,” as the community called it, was the first unofficial port of ColdFusion MX to OS X, which Dick Applebaum pioneered and documented. Dick figured that since ColdFusion MX is implemented in Java, and since Java is cross platform, why couldn't he simply move the Linux version of ColdFusion MX to a Mac and change some of the configuration to combine his favorite language with his favorite operating system? Although it wasn't quite that easy, he figured out; thanks to him, so too did many others in the Macintosh community.
I contributed the start-up script to Dick's Linux hack, and helped him iron out some of the details. In fact, I used my Mac to present at the Flashforward 2002 conference in New York, and several people in the audience became far more interested that I was running ColdFusion MX on my Mac than they were in my actual presentation. In fact, I devoted a whole section of my Q&A time to talking about the Linux hack. At the time, Dick was working on a three-part article for O'Reilly Publishers, documenting the process.
So why should you be excited? Why did Dick and others devote hours to figuring out the Linux hack? Why did O'Reilly ask Dick to write a special, three-part article on his work? Why did Macromedia decide to release a full version of JRun 4 and a developer version of ColdFusion MX for Mac OS X? And why did the Mac community respond like a pack of hungry wolves?
I think the answer to that question is that ColdFusion and OS X share a special commonality. Something about the two platforms makes them complement each other and makes them fit together naturally—that something is an emphasis on user experience.
I switched from using Linux to using OS X for the same reason I have heard many others do so: I wanted the best of both worlds. Those two worlds are Unix and, for lack of a better term, the world of sophisticated GUI apps. I wanted to be able to run a reliable server alongside a Powerpoint presentation or work on the command line while listening to MP3s in iTunes. I wanted an operating system that delivered the best of Unix with the best, most reliable, and most powerful graphical applications in the industry.
But why ColdFusion on OS X? If OS X is, at its core, a Unix operating system, which allows me to run several different server products and work with almost any web technology, why was I interested in working with ColdFusion? Once again: because I wanted the best of both worlds. With ColdFusion, the best of both worlds meant that I wanted all the power and flexibility of a J2EE application, but also the extremely simple and straightforward API of ColdFusion. I wanted to be able to run database queries with a single, simple tag, and to have access to very advanced techniques like synchronization and database transactions without writing all the code behind them myself. I wanted powerful, natural, rapid application development. As a developer, I wanted a positive user experience.
I think most ColdFusion developers who use Macs have set themselves up with JRun and ColdFusion MX by now, are successfully developing applications on their Macs, and deploying them on production platforms like Solaris, Linux, and Windows. But I also know there are a lot of Mac users who are still wondering what ColdFusion MX is all about. Fortunately, they can find out for free. For those of you who want a web development platform that is as powerful and easy to use as your Mac, learn more about ColdFusion MX and JRun 4 for Mac OS X today.
About the author
Christian Cantrell is the Macromedia Server Community Manager. He has been developing large-scale, web-based applications in ColdFusion, Java, JSP, and Macromedia Flash for the last five years. He is the author of numerous tutorials and whitepapers, and is coauthor of Flash Enabled: Flash Design & Development for Devices. Keep up with Christian by reading his blog.
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