With all the normal Apple updates applied (I.E. No additional effort has been made by the customer to install a particular version of Java), what versions of Java are available for the Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard versions of Mac OS X? If it also depends on the hardware 32bit/64bit could you please include this information.
Thank you for your answers.
K.P.Sullivan
Snow Leopard is Java 6. Leopard is Java 5 (and perhaps Java 1.4 if upgraded, not sure). Tiger is Java 1.4.
Be certain to require that the machines are fully updated from Software Update.
The entire list for Mac OS X <=10.5 is in tables 1, 2, 3 and 4 on this page. I took the 10.6 numbers from my own system. The basics are:
10.6: Java SE 1.6.0 (not on that page)
10.5: Java SE 1.6.0, 1.5.0, 1.4.2
10.4: Java SE 1.5.0, 1.4.2, 1.3.1
10.6 has all Java versions symlinked to 1.6.0 so there doesn't seem to be a real Java 5 or 1.4 VM available. Just a 1.6 one pretending to be an earlier version.
1.5 Seems to be the safest bet, there may still be some people running 10.4. People running earlier versions of Mac OS X would seem to be a dying breed.