MacOS – How to get Java 6 in OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion)

Another shot in the dark...but this page suggests downgrading to Perian 1.2.2 on Lion (see "Solution 1").

The latest version 1.2.3 of Perian doesn't work on Mac OS X Lion. So if you have a Mac running Mac OS X 10.7, say, Lion, you have to downgrade the previous version, say 1.2.2. The version of 1.2.3 of Perian does not support QuickTime 10 in Lion and fails to fix the loss of audio after one second in xvid files with ac3. So if you have a Mac with Lion, converting video to QuickTime is highly recommended.

However, that particular page is all about how to play AVI files with Quicktime, so it may not work, but might be worth a try?

Apple's tools don't see Java 7, Oracle's tools don't see Java 6; it's all a bit ugly. Luckily there's an ugly fix to go with it!

Normal Mac Java 6 running on 10.8:

java -version
java version "1.6.0_33"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_33-b03-424-11M3720)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.8-b03-424, mixed mode)

Install the Java 7 JDK (not just the JRE) from Oracle.

Move the system java out of the way (so you can get it back if you want):

sudo mv /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdkx

Then symlink 7 in place of 6:

sudo ln -s /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_06.jdk /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk

and voila:

java -version
java version "1.7.0_06"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_06-b24)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 23.2-b09, mixed mode)

I've not had trouble with any java apps so far (apart from java preferences which checks which java it's running under).

There's probably a better way of doing this, but it works for me.