There's an interesting paragraph in the latest Mac OS X Java update relasenotes New and Noteworthy - a paragraph called "Java Deprecation".

I don't think this link is NDA'd outside of apple's developer program - it seems publicly available at least.

As of the release of Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 3, the version of Java that is ported by Apple, and that ships with Mac OS X, is deprecated.

This means that the Apple-produced runtime will not be maintained at the same level, and may be removed from future versions of Mac OS X. The Java runtime shipping in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, will continue to be supported and maintained through the standard support cycles of those products.

What does this in fact mean? I'm not sure. Does it mean no java in Mac OS X Lion? Does it mean that apple now expect us to move to OpenJDK? Or will Oracle/Sun start developing a mac version in the same way as they provided windows, solaris and linux?

We'll have to see if more info comes out - perhaps on the mac java mailing list.