That just seems like very bad practice. System.gc() usually does not do anything, and it might seem as if a lot of memory is being used. Usually the gc kicks into gear if the memory is really needed, though.

Don't know the OS X jvm, but it can't be THAT bad...

I had some troubles with mobile phone JVMs, usually manually setting all pointers to null was doing the trick, though.

In any case, I wouldn't blame Java for some bad implementations of jvms.