That's because they want you to use Float.valueOf(...) instead of new Float(...) for ... reasons. valueOf() has been added in 1.5, but jPCT is still being compiled to run with 1.4 to make it possible to run the software renderer on really old machines. If that's reasonable or not is another question, but that's how it is for now.
I don't think that they'll ever remove new Float(...), because it will break lots and lots of old code for no reason other than some guy thinks that it's nicer this way. The same applies to finalize(). It's not advised to use it for your own horrifying purposes for at least a decade now, but they haven't provided any other way to clean up stuff before an instance gets garbage collected by the VM, in case the programmer didn't do it.
If you have something to share, I'll be happy to include it.
I don't think that they'll ever remove new Float(...), because it will break lots and lots of old code for no reason other than some guy thinks that it's nicer this way. The same applies to finalize(). It's not advised to use it for your own horrifying purposes for at least a decade now, but they haven't provided any other way to clean up stuff before an instance gets garbage collected by the VM, in case the programmer didn't do it.
If you have something to share, I'll be happy to include it.

It's actually a performance issue. The "old" transparency code is optimized for speed and not accuracy, which is why its results are not on par with what the GL renderer could do. The alpha stuff has been added much later. It's more flexible but also slower.