Is it possible to update my iMac running OS X Snow Leopard to Java 7?
I'm just a user, not a developer, and I need Java 7 to access data from a website that I frequently use. I'm afraid to plunge forward and run into more problems.
Java 7 update for Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8
javaosx-snow-leopard
Related Solutions
Why don't you just get an eSATA bracket and pull it to one of the SATA connectors in your Mac Pro? Much more elegant, much better, and no need to worry about driver support.
If you really must have an eSATA PCI-E card for any reason... then good recommendations are from FirmTek (which doesn't use the Sil3132 chipset). Firmtek, who writes their own drivers, have pledged support for 10.6.
Grumble. There are multiple versions of Java that can coexist on Mac OSX, and you have to run Java Preferences (in /Applications/Utilities) to select the default version.
I love my iMac but sometimes Apple just doesn't bother explaining some really simple stuff that would make life a lot easier.
So now I am running 1.6.0_15 successfully.
Best Answer
As others have stated, Oracle is only supporting Java 7 on Mac OS X 10.7 and above. The openjdk-osx-build project (http://code.google.com/p/openjdk-osx-build/) was creating OpenJDK 7 builds for OS X 10.6, but has recently shuttered the operation.
The build and package scripts were moved to the OBuildFactory project. This recent OBuildFactory post indicates there will be no further efforts to build OpenJDK 7 on OS X 10.6: https://github.com/hgomez/obuildfactory/issues/3
It looks like rolling your own OpenJDK 7 got a lot harder. If you need Java 7, upgrading to OS X 10.8 is probably the easiest route (upgrade from the Mac App Store costs $19.99) -- but your desktop will start looking and behaving more like a phone.