IBM today announced the availability of Lotus Notes 7.0.2 for the Mac OS X platform, providing the enterprise Macintosh community an email and collaboration platform with advanced productivity features and a user interface with all the design elements with which they are familiar.
The Notes 7.0.2 client provides Mac users, including those using Intel-based Macs as well as Power PCs, with the following instant messaging, presence awareness and Web 2.0 features:
• An enhanced user interface and key email productivity features, enabling Mac users to group emails through a conversation thread, to view emails at-a-glance and to save work in progress without having to manually activate the save function.
• Enhanced collaboration through integrated instant messaging and presence awareness, allowing Mac users to communicate in real time across the enterprise from within the Notes e-mail, calendar and contacts.
• Full calendaring features, such as group scheduling and meeting delegation.
• Embedded RSS technology, allowing users to publish data from any Lotus Notes application using an industry standard RSS format.
• A feature-rich, easy to personalize blog template for the creation of interactive online journals, which bloggers can add or update content to on or offline.
Lotus Notes 7.0.2 for the Macintosh is available immediately. Lotus Notes software starts at SRP of $101 per seat.
More info here.
Its a chair?
anyone here use Notes? Is it better than Outlook or Entourage? I’ve only used up to v5
no the lotus position is usually on the floor, or a mat.
Lotus Notes is one of the most frustrating programs I’ve ever used. Absolutely awful interface.
[sic] –
Lotus Notes is an unlanced boil on the ass of productivity. Avoid it like a diarrhea-stained bowl in a toilet at the bus station.
Nice of them to do a mac version, though.
Django is right; Lotus Notes is an awful program. I hate to say it, but Outlook’s interface is superior.
I hated Notes when I first started using it, I wished for the days of Outlook and Exchange. But now I am grateful, because I use a MacBook Pro running Windows in Parallels as my Windows development machine and run Notes in OS X. Why am I grateful? Because now Notes is Universal Binary, I can run one less app through Rosetta, I don’t have to use Windows for close to 70% of my day job, and I wouldn’t be trying to get Entourage working with Exchange. Notes on the Mac is pretty close, or already is now, 100% functionality with the Windows version.
Now you may not like the functionality, but at least it can suck on all platforms
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I use Notes in an enterprise environment so we have “compatibility” with our Windows users. Search Lotus Notes to find web sites that talk about the insanely poor user interface…
I use Notes (have no choice). It is convoluted
junk.
If you are like me and your enterprise uses Notes, it’s nice to have a OS X – native option. We are still using the 6.X version of Notes – and this Mac client isn’t perfectly stable on an Intel Mac (though it does work).
I’m sorry to disagree, but SAP has the worst user interface in the Universe – not Notes. And it’s equally bad across all platforms.
I have to agree with dpp about SAP.
I’m forced to use it (via a Mac client) at work.
It’s not so much user unfriendly as user vicious.
I used Notes with my previous employer, and it has a strange interface. It’s more of a collaboration platform than something that is directly comparable to Outlook/Entourage. I wouldn’t use it by choice. But I’m glad there is a new version for Mac users.
As far as I am concerned, this is another box checked on the IT compatibility list for the enterprise, especially in IBM mainframe IT dominated environments. Perhaps this will be where the Macintosh and OS X will start to break into the large corporations as the computer of choice. In the military, this is called preparing the battlefield.
Notes, shmotes. Where’s <a > Improv</a> for OS X? Release it or sell it to Apple for iWork.
@Micro Me: ‘User Vicious’ – great expression!
@NickBob: Improv – good point! A true MacOSX version would make a good complement to KeyNote and Pages. Alog with FileMaker, this bundle could go a long way to turn iWork into a great replacement for AppleWorks.
As for the Notes debate: I’ve used Notes on a Mac and a PC back in the days of System 7 through 9 (1992 – 2001) when my job involved selling a Notes based solution for multi-national corporates. I welcome this new development and fully support any third party developer as well as Apple in attempting to get back into the large business market.
However, do not under-estimate the power the shephard in Redmond wields over the herds that sit bleating in corporate IT departments the world over. I still hear echos of “What? Your system runs on Lotus Notes and requires a Domino server? Our CTO/Head of IT/CIO (and their good friend, the CFO) won’t allow anything other than a Microshaft product. Can’t you guys re-write your collaborative application in Access?” [Notes is primarily about allowing groups of people in businesses to work collaboratively especially in a 24/7/365 multi-time zone environment].
Being UNIX based and by making the whole widget, Apple’s got itself into a great position to move back into the corporate market in the coming five years. However, while the battlefield preparation is taking place with assets being placed strategically ready for a move, I see no evidence of substance to do so.
Personally, I favour the bottom-up approach: Apple should go for the individual worker and empower people to bring an Apple to work. Be it the iPod (great platform for delivering just in time training to workers the field in both video and audio forms) or advanced personal computing in the form of a hybrid PDA/tablet/UMPC device. The latter, done right in the style of the iPod and iTunes duo, is a great niche from which to inflict a reverse takeover of corporate hearts then minds. And toss a few sheep on the barbi!
In this way, Apple could become a force in democratizing personal computing in a corporate environment…
Oops! I forgot to add:
Lotus Notes 7.0.2 for the Mac is a serious expression of confidence in Apple by a third party developer that supplies solutions to the ‘non-creative’ end of the business spectrum.
It’s quite a bet Lotus have placed on the IT roulette table and they should be supported by all.
This is fantastic news. The Notes family can be a lot of things to a lot of different people. Notes blows the doors off of exchange servers. If you’ve had a bad experience with Notes its because of less than stellar implementation. Considering that most of the bigs use Notes this is very good news for Apple in the corporate environment. One should remember that m$ has spun the story that Notes is inferior or on its last legs like they’ve tried to tell everyone that mac OS…………… The reality is that the TCO for Notes implementation is far superior to m$ products by a factor of at least ten – gee almost Mac like.
Notes rocks!
The problem is people think it’s an email client (with a somewhat weird interface) and nothing else.
In fact, Notes is a collaborative development system.
It’s full of idiosyncracies but I wouldn’t use anything else in a corporate environment.
When you can rebuilid a Notes server from scratch in 45 minutes, you know you’re on a winner. (A ComputerWorld article detailed the same process on Exchange Server and it took close to a day!)
And most importantly, there’s no viruses for it.
I work in IT Support for a county that runs Notes 7.0.1 for those who need the enhanced functionality and Domino Web Access for everybody else. Idiosyncratic is a good way to describe the system. The platform has compelling capabilities but does very little to help users access that power. The client version and web versions barely resemble each other, and neither is particularly standard for those who are used to working in MS Office or the other standard applications that we have in the workplace. In addition to that, our web implementation has been tied to IE 6/7, locking out all Mac-users and PC-users who prefer alternative browsers from the web version.
My impressions? Decent foundation, confusing interface(s), unfortunate local implementation. Looking forward to trying the new Mac version.
(Magic word – hell. Somewhat appropriate!)
So has anyone found the actual download link for the client? Lotus once more wins the “most convoluted website award”.