In Intellij 2017.x, 2016.x, 15.x, 14.x the given solution does not work as the option is removed.
The problem can be solved by changing JDK for Importer to a latest JDK instead of User Internal JRE which was 1.6.0 by default on Mac
The setting JDK For Importer can be found in:
Preferences -> Build, Execution,Deployment -> Build Tools -> Maven -> Importing