Lotus Notes To Receive Better Mac Support

[portent]

Notes and GroupWise...

Both Notes and GroupWise have better Mac support than Microsoft offers through Entourage. And for free.

None of the three (Lotus Notes, Novell GroupWise, or Microsoft Exchange/Outlook/Entourage) offers the same level of support for the Mac as they do with Windows. The clients are always more limited and often buggy. But Entourage is the least capable and most expensive mail/collaboration program by far.

I'm all for the new Notes client, and I wish Lotus nothing but success.

 

[kondspi]

People still use LOTUS???!!!!???

 

[DeepIn2U]

Yes ppl still use Notes.
> for the price its cheaper than MS Exchange. And isnt limited to 50K accounts (for email that is. Without additions/packs).

Sametime 7.5 just went GOLD+ for the past few weeks. Its interface looks pretty good and the ability to keep the history in a chat for INDIVIDUAL ppl that participated - for a limited time pre set by the user, or indefinately. But its STILL buggy, crashing on end on multiple machines (WinXP SP2) without a cause; that we can figure out.

BTW; I work at IBM here in Toronto for their client BNSF.

This should be interesting to see how Apple rolls with this announcement.

 

[dernhelm]

My last exposure to Notes was 12 yrs ago. We hated it. After 5 yrs, my then company decided to move to Exchange to much hype that it would be a lot better.

It wasn't. I still miss the days of Notes. I've since moved on to two different companies, each of whom have used Exchange. Not once has the Exchange implementation been any better than I remember Notes being more than 7 years previous.

But I will face facts. Notes lost the battle - it is a dead platform for all intents and purposes. As went 1-2-3, so went Notes. It's a shame really because Exchange/Outlook is so terrible, that you'd think anyone with a modicrum of experience could trump it without even trying really hard.

I mean, really, do you need 80% of one of my CPU cores to look up a name in an address book? And how large does the memory footprint of an e-mail app need to be? I often have to shut down Outlook just so compiles will complete in less time. But that will never get better now, because there is no one to push them.

 

[xPismo]

yay! Anything that makes my powerbook more useful in the work environment is a good thing.

 

[sonicboom]

Who gives a rats butt about Lotus Notes?
Keep it on OS/2 Warp.

 

[DeepIn2U]

My last exposure to Notes was 12 yrs ago. We hated it. After 5 yrs, my then company decided to move to Exchange to much hype that it would be a lot better.

It wasn't. I still miss the days of Notes. I've since moved on to two different companies, each of whom have used Exchange. Not once has the Exchange implementation been any better than I remember Notes being more than 7 years previous.

But I will face facts. Notes lost the battle - it is a dead platform for all intents and purposes. As went 1-2-3, so went Notes. It's a shame really because Exchange/Outlook is so terrible, that you'd think anyone with a modicrum of experience could trump it without even trying really hard.

I mean, really, do you need 80% of one of my CPU cores to look up a name in an address book? And how large does the memory footprint of an e-mail app need to be? I often have to shut down Outlook just so compiles will complete in less time. But that will never get better now, because there is no one to push them.

Well said. Maybe its time freeware communities such as OpenOffice make a HUGE push of functionality, portability, efficiency, and ability to work with Active Directory & Such to challenge MS.

 

[gkhaldi]

Finally. I was waiting on this news since 2004 !!

Looking forward to see the new version(s)

 

[gkhaldi]

Who gives a rats butt about Lotus Notes?
Keep it on OS/2 Warp.

Those people on whom Apple will have to rely on in the future for buying their products.

I'm pretty sure that the move to the Intel platform was mere than availibility of a power5 portable. Apple really wants to push forward in the corporate market and needs enterprise apps like Notes.

So in short, I'm one of those who gives.

 

[Kelmon]

Too Late

Well, it would have been nice but my company (delivers packages, owns Memphis) switched to Exchange about a year ago, mostly because Notes was too damned expensive. Oh well.

For those of you still working in organisations using Lotus Notes, I guess this is good news.

 

[russed]

Maybe it's just IBM and Grant Thornton.

no i have thought of another company - my girlfriend starts at the John Lewis Partnership on monday and they use it also! - 3 companies and counting!

 

[dcv]

...along with many investment banks, accountancy firms, law firms, consultancies...

 

[csect]

Where is that?

Yeh, we use Notes at work too. Most every week we have to replace 3 ".dat" files or the thing won't even start up. But, then, it's not running on a Mac.

I'd love to see a list of big companies (in NYC) that use Macs. Really!

 

[Dalriada]

Really great news... can't wait to run iNotes from home for office access rather than using that old webmail interface....

 

[iJed]

I suppose this is a good thing but it doesn't stop the Notes client being one of the most terrible software packages that I've ever had the misfortune to endure.

In my department I have managed to kill off this crap for its dreadful document management capabilities and have migrated us to using MediaWiki. Its amazing how much better documentation has become since this change.

 

[nwainwright]

Lotus Notes can be great, if implemented well (and few can)

Hi there,

I've been a Mac user since '84 and a Notes user since '93. I also am a Notes developer and I've led dozens of Notes implementations. It's a great platform if it's done well. The biggest achilles heel has been their user interface (on any platform), and they're set to fix that (for the most part) in the next 12 months.

The Notes Mac client hasn't always been the best. Well, never the best but it's been usable and they should be applauded for their long-standing support of the Mac platform. One of the key execs at their development team, Tim Halvorsen, was a key Mac supporter over the years (he's not there now).

The movement of OS X to a robust set of development tools, coupled with the maturity of software development practices in general across the software industry, means that full and exciting support of OS X alongside Windows is now a lot easier than it has ever been...meaning Macs will be making more inroads into enterprise accounts.

I applaud IBM's support of OS X and I only see things accelerating.

By the way...shops with Notes deployed well tend to be just as passionate about Notes and some of us can be about Macs.

...Neil

 

[YS2003]

Like many other mid-sized and large companies, my current company also uses Lotus Notes. One of the features I like about Notes is address search. I can partially type in the name of my colleague and Notes retrieves the rest of the name (without me creating the address book). It gets awefully slow after the local server (meaning, the notebook's internal HD) reaches 1 GB data (for email); So, I had to create new local every 1 GB.

The Mac support for Notes would be good as that might open up a possibility my current employer's IT department might allow MBP for a company-issued notebook. As of now, it is all Dell.

Now that Notes will become more Mac friendly, the only other obstacle would be using AS400 database via Ramba.

 

[Tommy Wasabi]

I'm Sorry to Offend - but Notes Sucks

God I hate Notes- it's an operating system on top of an operating system. It's databases are just a step up from Access and to be honest - it's a pig.

I've been forced to use the piece a crap for over 5 years (I'm a consultant) and it had brought me great pleasure to help large scale enterprises move away from this overstuffed piece of crap.

Is Exchange any better - yes and no - in general they both are crappy. The biggest advantage of Notes is that their CALs (licenses) are so cheep compared to Exchange/Outlook.

When I start looking for a new job - the first question I'll ask is which Universal Messaging Platform have you deployed in your Enterprise? If they answer "Notes" I'll know the following about their organziation:

1. They care more about the dollar than about usability and employee satisfaction
2. The VP of IT is probably sleeping with the IBM rep
3. The business only uses it because they don't know any better (they've been there too long and have never used anything other than Notes and AOL).
4. They think that Notes databases are cool and hip and truly believe Access is an enterprise level database
5. And finally, they are so damn stupid they probably have Lotus 123 and Word Perfect as their "Office Suite"

"Save me lord from these fools"

 

[eRondeau]

I too am forced to use Lotus Notes at work. Maybe it hasn't been "implemented properly" in my office, but it is a horrible, awful thing. Even common commands are hidden deep inside nondescript menus and any attempt at customizing anything ends with frustration. I would hope that this bloated piece of software crap stays far, far away from the Mac platform forever.

 

[dernhelm]

Well said. Maybe its time freeware communities such as OpenOffice make a HUGE push of functionality, portability, efficiency, and ability to work with Active Directory & Such to challenge MS.

I thought about that as I wrote it. The main problem is that any application that matters will need to interoperate seamlessly with outlook clients and other exchange servers. It has got to deal with appointments, resources, etc, exactly the same way Outlook does. Since the details of all that is built on a closed platform, it won't be easy. You can try to compensate by interoperating with the open portions of Active Directory, but that wouldn't really be enough.

That said, I really don't think it would be hard to outperform Exchange/Outlook, and you could provide similar functionality in a different way, but the real problem is interoperating.

 

[sfwalter]

Lotus Notes is such a horrible product for an email client. Notes existed long before they added email capabilities, and then they retrofitted email into the product.

I like to use an email product where I can get access to all my email accounts (both personal and work related). Luckily in Notes you can have it forward your email to another email client. So I read my Notes mail in Apple's Mail client.

I'm not bitter

 

[valiar]

I, for one, see nothing great in that news.
Why?
Lotus Notes should simply go away. Forever. It is *that* horrible.
I know that I will get the usual canned response here from Notes fans ("but, you see, it is not just an email app, it is so much more...").
However, the client interface on Windows is beyond unusable (it is a horrible, terrible mess). It sucks as an email client. And it sucks as a database.
I have been forced to use it in my previous job, and I hated every minute of it.
By the way, I also did development on it... So i do know about all possible bells and whistles.
It is still horrible.

 

[sl8r]

i, too, am firmly in the "Notes Haters" camp.

I know that I will get the usual canned response here from Notes fans ("but, you see, it is not just an email app, it is so much more...").

Yeah, they're probably the worst fanboys in the IT industry; "But it can do so much!" yes well if it can do so much, why is it the crashtastic pile of ***** that it is today? If it crashes on you, you have to reboot the PC, cos just trying to start Lotus Notes again will give you a cryptic error message.

The user interface is the worst ever ("click that little unmarked rectangle top-left in the mail view to check for new mail!", and, oh, about 10'000 other possible examples of UI idiocy).

The last two jobs I've held have forced me to use this decades-past-it's-heyday trainwreck, and even though I've used it in various incarnations (~R4-R6 and whatever the latest public version is), I would love to know what the people at IBM were and still are smoking. Shouldn't you fix glaringly obvious bugs, from release to release? Do they even employ UI designers at IBM? Do they actually consider things such as optimizing performance, when rolling out a new release?

As far as I can see, the sole reason it still exists, apart from the fact that you can send and receive emails and do scheduling with it (which are the two things most companies use it for today), seems to stem from the veritable ARMIES of consultants and developers that keep on recommending it, ostensibly to protect their own incomes after having spent thousands learning how to develop applications for it.

 

[Tommy Wasabi]

The Great News for The Faithful

If there is any silver lining in any of this...

The guy that actually created Notes for Lotus (and then IBM) is now the CTO of Microsoft.

Sniff, sniff - yup I smell more crap coming from Microsoft. They are making this too easy.

 

[Scottyman]

Unread marks have been there a lot longer than that.

@RedTomato: Being able to switch them off at the database level is new though