Why doesn't 'press-and-hold' work?

Question

I have a program that uses JTextArea. When I set keyboard focus in the JTextArea in the GUI and then hold down, say, the 'E' key, only one letter 'E' appears in the area. If I want further 'E' letters, I have to release the button and press it again.

Is there a way to change this, so that, by holding the 'E' key on my keyboard, 'E' letters keep appearing until I release the key, as I am used to with most software? I'm using the OSX platform.

Example program:

import java.awt.*;
import javax.swing.*;

public class PressAndHold {

    private JFrame frame = new JFrame();
    private JTextArea textArea = new JTextArea();

    public PressAndHold() {
        frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        frame.setSize(400, 400);
        frame.setLayout(new GridLayout());
        frame.add(textArea);
        frame.setVisible(true);
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
            public void run() {
                new PressAndHold();
            }
        });
    }
}