Java 7 update 4 has been released. It is even available for MacOS X from Oracle: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk-7u4-downloads-1591156.html
Java 6 will reach end of life in about 6 months. After that point, there will be no more public updates from Oracle for Java 6, even security updates. https://blogs.oracle.com/henrik/entry/updated_java_6_eol_date You can of course pay them for updates or build your own OpenJDK. The entire Hadoop ecosystem needs to test against Java 7 JDKs this year. I will be testing some small clusters of ours with JDK 7 in about a month, and my internal projects will start using Java 7 features shortly after. See the JDK roadmap: http://blogs.oracle.com/javaone/resource/java_keynote/slide_15_full_size.gif https://blogs.oracle.com/java/entry/moving_java_forward_java_strategy
