I think you’re cutting your noses off to spite your face over this. Code it for Java, to work fast on Windows. That’s one of the main reasons why you’re using Java I hope - to get as many computers running your software as possible. This means that to create a net balance of happiness, make the Windoze people happy first, and then complain to Apple a lot about the performance problem in MacOSX. They’ll listen; AIUI they’ve been fixing performance problems constantly in OSX.
Cas 
I’m only whining because I want to do stuff on my laptop (Powerbook)… from the marketing aspect… you’re right.
While I can appreciate what you are saying Cas, I think you are a little off. Code for your target, which typically is the machine you are on and use yourself (which in most cases is Windows). In this case, swpalmer is a OS X user and he is disappointed, feeling like he can’t use his platform of choice. Not everything is a cut and dried marketing scheme, sometimes you are just doing things for yourself.
Well, yes that’s basically it… I mean I have a fairly spiffy windows box at work, and a broken one at home… so I’m not totally out of luck… But I can’t run any Java applications (that use Swing) on my home machine because they lock the machine up instantly whenever they try to do something with direct draw. (I know I can turn that off). Basically the machine doesn’t support graphics cards (seriously - that’s what the Tyan support guy ended up admitting).
Well, that’s exactly what I mean by cutting your nose of to spite your face A good moan to Apple is the only thing that can really help in the long run, or you’ll forever be stuck in the same situation.
Cas
Trust me the message has been delivered to Apple, and I do expect that they are working on it. They were just so late with their 1.4.1 implementation that they did the logical choice of … get it out as fast as possible, THEN optimize it. I can’t really blame them for that strategy…but it doesn’t make it any less frustrating :).
Overall I think Apple has a great commitment to the Java platform… but it’s not like they have the resources of Microsoft to dump on it.
Doesn’t that just mean you have to be in full screen mode before you check out those capabilities? I know it is the case for isDisplayChangeSupported. I hadn’t realised until moving from Linux - which always returns false - to testing on a Windows box and still not going into fullscreen.
In the meantime you could try using the quicktime for java stuff to go in to Fullscreen mode. It might give you better performance, although if it does it makes you wonder what apple have done to mess up performance in 1.4. You want to check out the class FullScreenWindow (can’t remember the package off hand). Although whilst trying to find the javadoc for it, I read that QT for java is only supported in 1.3, and not in 1.4. So to use it you’d have to run 1.3. I guess it’s classic Apple, not being overally concerned with backwards compatibility.