The resistance I recall to upgrading the Java standard has two components. One is that hola, Our Founder, insisted on being able to develop on an Apple system that could not be upgraded. The second was that it was believed that there were users in a similar situation. Unless there is an active dev willing to admit the are running on ancient Apple hardware the first reason is no longer valid. Since, AFAIK, we can generate bytecode for an early version we can now deal with the latter case if any such users identify themselves.