Big Blue has just launched “Lotus software for the iPhone platform and has more plans yet for Apple’s tablet,” Andy Greenberg reports for Forbes.
“Apple’s iPad represents a thin, 1.5-pound wrecking ball aimed at the division between netbooks and smart phones. But it may also do collateral damage to another long-crumbling barrier: the separation between work and play. And if that happens, IBM wants be ready to help tear down the wall,” Greenberg reports.
“Earlier this week at the Macworld conference in San Francisco, IBM announced new business-focused apps for the iPhone operating system, including Lotus Connections tool for social networking inside companies and Lotus Quickr software for sharing documents,” Greenberg reports. “Those releases follow Big Blue’s launch last month of a Lotus Notes app for the iPhone that includes e-mail and calendar tools, as well as an app known as Lotus Notes Traveler that allows encrypted e-mail.”
Greenberg reports, “While those programs are partly aimed at tapping into the small but growing number of iPhones in the enterprise, IBM’s manager of Lotus software says they’re also timed to give Big Blue a foothold on the iPad, which will use the same software platform. ‘Our customers are looking at the iPad and they’re excited about it,’ says Rennie. ‘No one quite knows its use patterns yet, but it’s our intention to deliver as much of our portfolio as possible on it as fast as possible.'”
Full article here.
Lotus Notes. A satisfactory second-place finisher in the “Corporate E-Mail Suite”. It all works, and works well, but it lacks the buzz generated by the MSFT package. And MSFT has a consumer version.
IBM can see that business users in major organizations, healthcare, insurance and real estate will use this “new” iPad device readily.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” /> Consumers and gamers will show the way forward!!!
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” /> AAPL will go Up higher 4 sure! Buy now!
IBM have been dreaming of creating something like an iPad for years. Nowdays, they don’t have to create one.
Just use one, and make a kickarse app for it
Wow, IBM has been saying stuff like this for years. Try to use Lotus Notes with a Safari Web Browser, NOT!. Fact is they never support the Mac to the level they say, it’s treated as a red headed step child.
IBM has to deliver on the goods before I’ll believe it.
Surprised there’s no MDN take on this BS announcement.
What is more curious is that these sort of news and buzz generated from the Macworld may keep the event relevant for a few years at least, with or without a certain presence, and I, for one, find that to be good.
@ DLMeyer
Lotus Notes does a lot more than the offerings from MicroLimp. Everything is a database in Notes, so not only does it do mail and calendars, it can do almost any other database app you care to design.
@DLMeyer;
By far, the worst experience experienced on my Mac is Entourage.
There is no second place.
Hands down, Entourage is the single worst thing that’s foisted upon me by work and I loathe it.
Perhaps I should quit beating around the bush and share my real feelings towards Entourage?
I hate it. Passionately.
IBM and their 90s turd Lotus crapware is irrelevant. They have always been anti Mac and anti Apple. Piss on em.
Here’s the thing…Why hasn’t somebody really spoken up here and said it..
Netbooks suck…I mean they are largely unusable little pieces of donkey turd.
Ever tried a Hackintosh on a Dell netbook?…The word abomination is honestly too weak to describe it.
The keyboard is too small to type on, the screen is too small to actually read anything, the CPU is too underpowered to accomplish anything, and they won’t run a true complete version of OS X….(that’s right some core services are disabled)…
The fact that they are portable and cheap doesn’t mean much.
So is a 1 pound bag of fertilizer..only THAT’s useful
Didn’t I read somewhere the US gov. uses Lotus Notes? This could be good for the platform IF IBM follows through.
Lotus made an astonishing spreadsheet program called Improv for NeXT that had a big booster in Steve Jobs. It competed with their other mainstream spreadsheet on PCs so it got lost when NeXT floundered. They ought to try porting it to OS X, and to the iPad especially.
I really hate Lotus Notes on the PC. It is the most user un-friendly e-mail/calendar/contacts/etc software I have ever seen. I sure hope they make it better for the iPhone/iPad.
The weak bulging rear ass of Office is wide open for a good slapping and it will cost MS a fortune in just trying to keep it covered.
Wow, IBM gets it. And, MSFT’s MBU sounds like they are considering bringing the Office Suite to the iPad. I doubt it’ll be price competitive to iWork for the iPad, but hey, it’s not the price that interests me, but the very fact that they seem to be moving quickly to get in front of the avalanche of iPad-mania.
I have to use Lotus Notes at my work. Honestly, it is a big, bloated, slow, resource-hogging piece of crap.
Anyone who knows IBM intimately enough will know how much of hot air this actually is. It wasn’t until Lotus Notes 8.5 that Safari finally gained the functionality that was available on MSIE/FF. Notes has grown so bloated, MS office looks like a nimble, lean 100kB app compared to it.
While IBM has the potential to do all this, their software philosophy has been a complete disaster. They go around acquiring technology and never really integrating it into their tools. As their own products grow and adopt all those acquired technological solutions, IBM doesn’t do ANYTHING to properly integrate everything, so you get totally overlapping features among components, totally inconsistent user interfaces, disparate development support teams without a clue what the others are doing…
IBM became the Frankenstein of computer software. As great as this iPad plan sounds, I am extremely skeptical about the execution.
Lotus Note users would rather use MS Outlook or Novell Groupwise. That’s enough to tell you how good it is. Good reason why I was glad to hear its creator now works for MS as the *chief architect*.
IBM projects always sounds good in the beginning, but if anyone ever heard of a satisfactory outcome or project that was accomplished according to plan, please stand up. Anyone?…
@Moo….agreed. My problem is since my so-called IT people can never get Mail to work with the exchange server, I am forced to use Entourage. I have searched the web, Apple sites and am stunned that I cannot get Mail to work since everybody and his dog can get it to work with Exchange server 2007.
Makes me paranoid that the IT people have deliberately saboaged it.
Crap…they even sabotaged the word sabotage…..sneaky bunch
Lotus Same Time for iPhone? any one?
Lotus Notes. The only OS X app able to turn MS Office into a great example of Apple HIG. Read the rant at http://www.bynkii.com/archives/2009/02/notes_still_sucks.html. On a hopeful note, IBM can’t screw up an iPhone OS version that much. But it’s still unlikely.
Best quote ever regarding mobile phones – The idea of putting Windows on a mobile device has been about as successful as the Zune.”
Classic!
Peace.
The iPad SDK is a steppingstone for developers from the iPhone to the Mac.