I have been given the option to either have a Windows laptop or a Mac laptop to do my Java development on. Before committing to one of these, I thought I would find out if there are any issues or benefits I should know about using a Mac laptop over a windows laptop?
One thing I did hear was that the Java JDK releases are not always the latest for Macs and you need to wait a while.
My environment is simple: Eclipse with Java EE 5.0
There are(/have been?) certain problems regarding the UI frameworks. But generally it should work.
Also have a look at: http://developer.apple.com/java/
For your configuration, there's no problem... That's true that sometimes you have to wait for release but nothing really insurmountable... I got some issues with Eclipse, though. It crashes quite often but I'm doing intensive stuff...
One my issue was with the shortcuts, that sounds dumb but I'm a heavy shortcut user and switching between control and the apple keys and alt was sometimes hard to remember..
I have not found major problems working on Macs for Java development (I usually develop both in Linux and Mac platforms). Regarding the sdk it is true that they are released with a delay compared to the Linux/Windows versions.
You will find the latest jdk at the Apple Developer Connection, you will need an apple developer account (it is free). As an advice, keep the images you download from Apple as it may happen that after a period of time they are not available, specially for old releases.
Regarding swing development, I think the SpringLayout is processed a bit different (some springs missing) as some JPanels developed in Linux produce some warnings in Mac. JPanels developed on Mac work fine in other platforms.
Don't forget that you can still run Windows (either virtually or natively (via BootCamp)), so even if it came down to simply liking the machine better, the Mac is still worth considering.
A benefit of the mac platform over the windows platform is the fact that you have a real terminal, that works. This helps immensity when you are deploying your code remotely.
The only issue that I can think of from my very limited experience is that Mac OS X (10.5.x) uses as default library JVM 1.5 where the newest one is JVM 1.6 so in some cases, using new functions/classes from JVM 1.6, you would have to change it manually. It is very straightforward in Eclipse.
Project -> Properties -> Java Build Path -> Libraries.
I use a Mac Pro for java development (Eclipse and Java 5) and Eclipse is quite unstable. May be its because of the 32 bit. I get Outofmemory errors all the time. I essentially run a Linux VM under VMWare Fusion and develop in it.
Could be of interest to know that Apple's support for Java 1.6 is only for the 64 bit intel architectures. If you are runnning a 32 bits cpu you have to be satisfied with 1.5
The google widget toolkit (GWT) development tools are also not completely supported; see GWT Getting Started guide.
As with eclipse the trouble often is in the SWT GUI bindings. They bind to java but are not themselves platform independent. You always have to hope that the bindings are correct for your platform (e.g. work as expected).
I frequently work back and forth between the two, and the only thing that occasionally bites me are the layout managers. They like to position components different among the OSs. Easy fix of course, but keep an eye on making mistakes.
Eclipse on OS X works fine for me, and IntelliJ Idea seems good too (haven't used it on OS X myself, but know plenty of people who have). Also the Shark profiler that comes with the apple developer tools works fine with java apps (you need to add -XrunShark as a VM property), allowing you to attach at runtime without any hassle. Plus it's free, which is nice.