Great another app that eats half a gig of ram

In what way did they try make it tank on the desktop?
I see MS more to blame in this case.
What they didn't want is for MS to warp Java such that it only worked on the Windows platform, losing its feature of platform independence.

Also, as mentioned time and time again, although they keep control over the Java language, the language's specs are aligned by the JCP. (Although I must admit, the new Regular expressions and Log libraries suck compared to the Apache's libraries)

Speaking as a Java applications developer, it works quite well on the desktop if done correctly, just like any other language.