Kif Leswing at Business Insder:
On an Apple listserv on Tuesday, Java developer Hugi Thordarson emailed a blast saying that Apple had confirmed to him that WebObjects was officially declared dead.
He wrote (emphasis added):
In the past years I’ve regularly sent letters to [Apple CEO] Tim Cook, asking about the state of WO (being the naggy guy I am) and recently, I was contacted by Apple executive relations regarding my questions. The guy I spoke to called a couple of times, at first, he had absolutely no idea what WO was but the second time he called, he had obtained information and had a clear statement: “WebObjects is a discontinued product and will never be upgraded.”
WebObjects made it first appearance in 1995 as NeXT’s server-side web application framework. Initially written in Objective-C, WebObjects has run on top of Java as of version 5. It made the transition to Apple, where it has slowly faded away. The price plummeted over the years, eventually being a free download.
With OS X Snow Leopard, Apple decoupled WebObjects updates from OS X Server releases, and its been eight years since the company has released a public update for the software.
By all accounts, Apple is the biggest user of WebObjects left. It still powers part — if not much — of the iTunes and App Stores, as well as Apple’s online store.
My guess is that this isn’t changing anytime soon, but rather this statement is a continuation of Apple’s policy since 2009. Apple’s still using and working with it internally, but anyone else still on the bandwagon had better be looking for a way off.
In other words, I don’t think there’s anything new to report here. But hey, putting Steve Jobs in a headline has to be good for clicks, right?