Lotus Notes and OS X Mountain Lion

July 27 2012

With heavy travel the last couple of weeks, I hadn't had a chance to get this blog posted before Apple released Mountain Lion earlier this week.

Lotus Notes 8.5.3 has some challenges running on Mountain Lion, which we have documented in IBM technote 159984. IBM has been working with Apple for several months in an effort to address these issues, but unfortunately there was no simple path to resolution prior to Apple's release.

Our plan is to support Notes 8.5.3 on Mountain Lion "soon" - next 30-60 days is the target - and Notes Social Edition 8.5.4 at its initial release. In fact, as Rob Novak has reported, Notes Social Edition in beta already handles these issues just fine.

The first and most impactful issue is Apple's introduction of an app called "Notes". I'm not interested in debating whether the word "Notes" in a software product is trademarked or whatever....the decision to add an app to sync notes from iOS devices is a logical and obvious one for Apple to make. But, as an OS application, the Mountain Lion install asserts supremacy and moves Lotus Notes off to the side in its own Lotus Notes folder. This could require recreating shortcuts or other desktop interactions. The technote also outlines situations where install and uninstall routines unintentionally affect each other between OS X Mountain Lion and Lotus Notes 8.5.3.

Alan Hamilton has published a suggested workaround. I'm not officially endorsing or supporting this, but several on the blogs have reported success using Alan's method. There are also concerns that the next time Apple upgrades the OS Alan's approach could have issues.

The second is the new OS X 10.8 Gatekeeper app. This new app requires software downloaded from the Internet to be signed. IBM have not yet signed the installer for Notes 8.5.3. There is a way to turn off this default setting on Gatekeeper, and our technote links to the Apple technote on how to do this. We plan to sign the Notes client installer, but doing so for 8.5.3 means issuing some kind of update for the installer etc.

Plainly I regret that we didn't have a better story for Mountain Lion on its first day, and yes as a Mac user I am well aware that Mac users typically are aggressive about deploying new versions of the operating system. Hope to have an update on this topic soon.

Link: ibm.com: Supportability Q&A about Lotus Notes and OS X 10.8 >

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Notes and Domino 8.5  Add/View Comments [48]

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  1. 1  Stuart McIntyre http://stuart-mcintyre.com | 7/27/2012 7:36:33 AM

    Thanks for posting this Ed, and well done to IBM for getting the Technote out so soon.

    I've had success running both 8.5.3 and the Social Edition beta on Mountain Lion so whilst there are workarounds needed, they are pretty straightforward to accomplish.

    Thanks again.

  1. 2  Henning Heinz  | 7/27/2012 8:04:36 AM

    There is a problem. You describe it, you link to some workarounds and you explain what happened and what you are going to do and when.

    And all published around the release date of Mountain Lion.

    That is not a bad story and answers a lot of questions.

    Ironically if you would have chosen some of the more complicated product names the "Notes" name issue could have been avoided. Still I do prefer simple names.

    Thank you.

  1. 3  Hans Miller  | 7/27/2012 8:54:52 AM

    Ed, you aware of the 853 standard client issue in Citrix 6.5 on MAC devices? Right now it's a showstopper to my company rolling out the standard client in our 6.5 citrix environment. Here's the pmr if you want to take look 06595 379 000

  1. 4  Tasslehoff Burrfoot http://tasslehoff.burrfoot.it | 7/27/2012 12:17:17 PM

    And what about Administrator and Designer for MacOS and Linux?

  1. 5  tom_rock  | 7/27/2012 1:59:25 PM

    Ed, don´t worry ! As an early adaptor of Mountain Lion, i had to update few major utilities on my MBP (Little snitch, VMWare etc.) because they are mentioned to be "incompatible"...

    Even don´t worry about the trademark. If you (IBM) get it to make the UI of the next Notes-Version shine as your preview, a few weeks ago ... you´re the winner!

    P.S. More UI-Previews are welcomed !

  1. 6  Carlos Casas http://about.me/carloscasas | 7/27/2012 4:05:18 PM

    Ed- Kudos to you for jumping on this and informing the community.

  1. 7  Arjun Roychowdhury http://blog.roychowdhury.org | 7/28/2012 7:25:26 PM

    What problems are people facing with 8.5.3 and mountain lion? I use 8.5.3 and upgraded to mountain lion. I've faced no issues except for Apple moving it to a different folder. All I did was to go to that folder and drag a copy onto the dock. Thats all. Moving apple notes away and bringing notes.app back to /Applications is a terrible idea. It will certainly break in the next update again.

  1. 8  Arjun Roychowdhury http://blog.roychowdhury.org | 7/28/2012 7:27:22 PM

    Ah ok, sorry, just read the technote. Looks like installing/uninstalling 8.5.3 on ML is an issue. Got it. I'll just make sure I don't delete it then :-)

  1. 9  Removed  | 7/28/2012 10:58:28 PM

  1. 10  Arjun Roychowdhury http://blog.roychowdhury.org | 7/29/2012 7:42:25 AM

    Mike, this is a common statement I read everywhere. I personally feel notes is huge bloatware - the decision to build on top of eclipse probably added another 200 pounds to it. It could have been much faster and leaner.

    However, that is the only major gripe I have with notes. We actually chose lotus notes over other solutions (we were not pushed into it by The Man). I'll list reasons why:

    a) If you are using Notes for anything beyond email, its functions are very useful. Many enterprises, including ours use it for more than email. In our case, for example, in addition to email, employee performance management as well as sales & BD documents are store as NSF files. They have access control including who can/cannot download etc. and being able to access presentations and past customer data from a unified client which is integrated with chat, address book (LN client) is very useful to complete a workflow (you don't need to use different clients)

    b) There are many remote users with us. I personally found notes replication to be one of the best in terms of resilience. People use it in local replication mode (Not server connected mode) - it hardly ever hangs/freezes (it used to in previous versions). While this feature seems obvious you'd be surprised how brittle incremental replication is in other solutions.

    c) Lotus Notes traveler is a _heck_ of a cool solution. I love it.

    Now if only they could eliminate the immense bloat, I'd be an even happy camper.

  1. 11  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 7/29/2012 12:16:48 PM

    @10 Arun I appreciate you responding to "Mike", but since he provided an invalid email address, I've removed his comment.

  1. 12  Arjun Roychowdhury http://blog.roychowdhury.org | 7/29/2012 7:39:25 PM

    No problem. Then you way as well remove my comment as its out of context Your call. BTW, its Arjun :)

  1. 13  Simon http://sci.esa.int | 7/31/2012 9:39:49 AM

    Do you know of any way around the installer script version checking? I'm not one for upgrading operating systems and 8.5.3 just cant be installed on the Hillside Cat at the moment.

  1. 14  Kevin Mort  | 7/31/2012 12:34:39 PM

    @13 Simon there is a post out there on LDD about the installcheck script and how to change it. Looking at this myself.

    Ran into the issue today on another machine, first I'd seen it mainly because I hadn't planned on upgrading to ML for some time just because I knew problems like this would occur - not a Lotus Notes statement just generally. I figure I'd wait until the early adopters figure out what the problems are are. :)

    And yes kudos to Ed and IBM for jumping on this early. In a large way it shows that being involved in another OS community makes you more aware of the need to address issues on all platforms.

  1. 15  Matt Chagnon  | 8/1/2012 9:55:37 AM

    Ed, Thanks for the update. I'm the only Mac in a land of PCs. This may be somewhat off-topic, but in my opinion, the best solution would be if Lotus Notes Traveler could somehow work with OS X Mail and Calendar (née iCal), just like it does on iOS. Many of my colleagues agree that it's the easiest and most useful way to access Lotus Notes email. (Keeping in mind that very few people choose their corporate email client.)

  1. 16  JFranchetti  | 8/2/2012 12:18:10 PM

    This started causing problems for us today. Hoping that there is an IF (interim fix) for this sooner than later.

  1. 17  Stephan Kopp http://stephankopp.net | 8/3/2012 7:38:28 AM

    @15 Matt, I totally agree! Would be great to use the mac native clients for mail, calendar and contacts with traveler and the notes client only when I need more functionality...

  1. 18  Thom Smith  | 8/3/2012 11:00:55 AM

    I installed Mountain Lion on the first day. The only real issue I have had with Lotus Notes 8.5.3 since then is that "Day-At-A Glance" on the left sidebar no longer works.

  1. 19  Thom Smith  | 8/3/2012 11:16:23 AM

    That should of course say "on the right sidebar"

  1. 20  Scott Skavdahl http://www.wyd.uscourts.gov/ | 8/5/2012 9:40:36 AM

    I have experienced same problem as Thom Smith--my "Day-At-A Glance" has gone blank--despite items being on the calendar.

  1. 21  Roger Stupf  | 8/6/2012 4:48:57 AM

    @15 Matt and @17 Stephan, I also agree. It would make my life much easier if I could check all my calender events in one program rather than having to switch between iCal (with my iCloud calenders) and Notes (for the business events). With my mail I already mostly use Apple Mail, although sometimes I cannot open attachments there and have to switch to Lotus Mail to open them...

    @ 19 Thom and @20 Scott: My "day at a glance" works. What I did: In the finder, I simply renamed the Lotus Notes app to "LotusNotes.app" (even within the Application folder), then installed Mount Lion. Both apps are working properly: the now "LotusNotes.app" and the "Apple Notes.app". Of course this means before updating Lotus Notes, I have to rename the Apple App before updating. But this approach could serve as a workaround for the next 30-60 days until the ML-savy Lotus 8.5.3-Version comes...

  1. 22  Nigel Boyle http://www.pdhook.co.uk | 8/8/2012 11:43:33 AM

    Hi Ed. Please Please include support for Terminal Services. After all it is only a version of Cytrix which you do support!

    Thanks, Nigel

  1. 23  Arne S Nielsen http://www.mynotesblog.com | 8/13/2012 11:06:03 AM

    Alan Hamiltons workaround works. But for me it was uneccesary as I use MacOSX in another language than English - and in this OS the app "Notes" has another name that does not interfere with (Lotus) Notes. So this seem to be an English language problem only. On my MacBook Air I used Alana Hamiltons method and it worked perfectly. On my iMac I did no special tricks - just installed OSX Mountain in Norwegian and then a clean install of Notes 8.5.4 - no problems whatsoever!

  1. 24  Arne S Nielsen http://www.mynotesblog.com | 8/13/2012 11:06:04 AM

    Alan Hamiltons workaround works. But for me it was uneccesary as I use MacOSX in another language than English - and in this OS the app "Notes" has another name that does not interfere with (Lotus) Notes. So this seem to be an English language problem only. On my MacBook Air I used Alana Hamiltons method and it worked perfectly. On my iMac I did no special tricks - just installed OSX Mountain in Norwegian and then a clean install of Notes 8.5.4 - no problems whatsoever!

  1. 25  Jeoff Wilks http://twitter.com/jeoffwilks | 8/15/2012 6:08:23 PM

    After upgrading to Mountain Lion, Lotus Notes does not start for me. Presumably a problem with the Java/Eclipse part of it, since I can get it to start if I set UseBasicNotes=1 in ~/Library/Preferences/Notes Preferences.

  1. 26  John Piscitelli http://www.lecroy.com | 8/23/2012 9:01:00 AM

    I am running Mountain Lion & Lotus Notes 8.5.3 FP1. I renamed notes.app to Lotus Notes.app before installing mountain lion and changed shortcuts and all has been ok until recently. Now I have a few issues. On the 2nd display when attached to macbook pro retina display i find that I cannot sort any column in mail, it just does not work. Also notes has been hanging after coming out of sleep where its easier just to close / open notes to get things back to normal. this also seems to follow when Lotus Notes is on the second screen. Anyone else seeing these issues?

  1. 27  Michael Falstrup http://www.intelliglobe.dk | 8/23/2012 9:18:45 AM

    Anyone had experience with Mountain Lion and fresh install!? Because that fails big time for me. Installations start fine, but when it reach the actual install/coonfiguration step in the process, it reports it as a wrong version "To low" actually. Gateway was set to accept all apps and Notes.app was moved to an Apple folder.

  1. 28  Tyler Stockton  | 8/27/2012 1:28:30 PM

    @27 - You have to go into the installer file and update the language checked by Lotus during the install. Lotus looks for "Mac OS X" and ML renamed the OS naming convention to just "OS X." Here's a link for some direction: { Link }

  1. 29  Christian Anderson  | 8/29/2012 10:47:38 AM

    Has anyone been using Lotus Notes 8.5.2 on a MacBook Pro Retina Display with VMWare Fusion?

    I want to get the MacBook Pro Retina display but must be able to also use Lotus Notes. I've been searching the web for anyone who has tried it and haven't found anything. Hoping some here can help. Thanks.

  1. 30  Christian Anderson  | 8/29/2012 10:50:46 AM

    @26 - John, Are you using Lotus Notes on a Retina Display Macbook? I thought this wasn't supported at all?

  1. 31  Kris Hansen http://www.corebankingblog.com | 9/9/2012 5:56:16 PM

    30 - Christian, I am running Notes 8.5 on a retina macbook w/Mountain Lion. No major issues except the renaming of Notes on the task bar as previously mentioned. Looking forward to the update and also liking the idea of a Traveller like solution for OSX!

    Kris

  1. 32  Jessie http://www.ad-in-one.com | 9/13/2012 5:57:52 AM

    I have tried all the possible methods written above, none of them worked for me.

    The script changing in that path does not work any more as the script now is simplified to "Running the InstallationCheck scrips

    OS Version Too Low"

  1. 33  Iain Devine  | 9/19/2012 8:31:05 AM

    Been nearly 60 days .. no update to the technote.. when can we expect a supported answer?

  1. 34  Wayne Redmon  | 9/20/2012 7:17:46 AM

    Apple's Mountain Lion update 10.8.2, released 9/19/12, just wiped out my Lotus Notes 8.5.3, and replaced it with Mac's Notes app.

    When, oh WHEN, will IBM release 8.5.4? C'mon IBM, bet on the ball!

  1. 35  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 9/20/2012 9:27:25 AM

    within the next two weeks. The workarounds seem to be working for now

  1. 36  Tabitha Wilson  | 9/20/2012 12:27:21 PM

    Stupid question - once you update the InstallationCheck script, how do you run the install. Since I copied the Contents folder out of the installer volume, it's not like I can just click on the Lotus Notes Installer.pkg.... Help!

  1. 37  Thepadol  | 9/21/2012 8:42:12 AM

    Received a new Macbook Pro Retina with 10.8.1 and decided to upgrade to 10.8.2 before anything else. I tried Notes 8.5.4 CD5 with the workaround but unfortunately Notes would simply crash when trying to open the workspace. Tried different things to no avail. Probably 10.8.2 introduced something else that is not expected or there is an eclipse problem with the new java runtime from Apple. Waiting to see if others are running into similar problems. Oh hum...guess I will do full recovery/restore this weekend and return the system to 10.8.1 and start all over again. Peter

  1. 38  Wayne Redmon  | 10/5/2012 7:34:59 AM

    Hi Ed,

    Any update on the Lotus Notes 8.5.4 Mountain Lion-fix release? On 9/20/2012 you stated at that time that it would be realesed within two weeks from that date.

  1. 39  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 10/5/2012 2:12:48 PM

    Technote published on how to get the fix: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21599884

  1. 40  Wayne Redmon  | 10/18/2012 8:44:38 AM

    Hi Ed,

    Will the slipstream still overwrite the Mac Notes.app?

  1. 41  Wayne Redmon  | 10/18/2012 1:11:32 PM

    Hi Ed,

    Please disregard my last comment. I did a fresh install of the 8.5.3 slipstream, and the SP2 Hot Fix. All went well.

  1. 42  alan  | 10/24/2012 7:23:41 AM

    Hi all,

    Anyone here can give me the installer please?

  1. 43  Edge  | 11/14/2012 8:08:47 PM

    They Slipstream install is behind a wall that requires a "site number." Since I'm not the IT guys for us, I have no idea what that is. :-( I've got the 8.5.3 download, but it tells me it can't install because I don't have the right OS version. Ugh. Very frustrating! :-)

  1. 44  Carmen kan  | 11/19/2012 12:38:22 PM

    I have installed notes 8.5.3 and with my Mac OS updated to 10.8. However, whenever I want to send out an email, it reports bug and force to quit. Log shows sth about the JavaVm. Does anyone has similar issue before and share what I can do? Thanks.

  1. 45  George T  | 12/12/2012 11:47:13 PM

    I am a newbie Mac user (MBP), but did a fresh install of Lotus Notes on Mountain Lion and everything seems to be working well so far, with the only glaring issue being the poor resolution on the Retina display.

  1. 46  Julian  | 12/18/2012 3:10:13 PM

    Does anyone get the Lotus Notes running on the new 13" Retina MBP. I struggle with a freezing startscreen. Have Mountain Lion 10.8.2 and installed Notes 8.5.3 + Fixpack3

  1. 47  Rani http://www.hidglobal.com | 1/24/2013 10:54:54 AM

    Hi Ed - thanks for this post. After leaving Lotus I am over at HID Global and helping to cross train other on LN which we run. I am now a Mac user so your posts are really helpful. Thanks~

  1. 48  Sohail Razvi  | 1/27/2013 12:39:55 PM

    Hi

    I downloaded an evaluation version for notes 8.5.3 for Mac. I however cannot download the slipstream because I do not have access to IBM Passport Advantage Online. How do I download the Notes 8.5.3 slipstream - that seems to fix the problem? Can someone help please? I have a 13" Retina MBP

    Thanks in advance...