MacRumors.com: Lotus Notes To Receive Better Mac Support

October 1 2006

Cool to see MacRumors pick up some recent press about the Notes 7.0.2 Mac client beta...

Many in the Mac community have been wondering whether Apple's Intel switch would bring forth increased interest from enterprise customers. Rhodin's comments can't be taken to represent the entire enterprise Mac market of course, but they can represent an interesting insight into how well the Mac version of a product that is used by government and many large corporations is doing.
Particularly interesting is how the Mac crowd reacted to this article, with a number of balanced and favorable comments, and mostly positive ratings.  A breath of fresh air versus slashdot-like community sites where people who used Notes 4.6 ten years ago and therefore are experts seem to lurk.

Link: MacRumors.com: Lotus Notes To Receive Better Mac Support >

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Machead  Add/View Comments [15]

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  1. 1  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 10/2/2006 9:17:07 AM

    There are still several obvious trolls, but it's better than most forums. I'm glad to see the Mac community taking this as a positive sign.

  1. 2  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 10/2/2006 9:54:18 AM

    Charles, the Mac community takes everything as a good sign, especially new software. Mike Rhodin has spoken well to the Mac crowd: "The Mac is a resurgent platform." The trolls would be people who have been forced to use Notes. I don't know about your Mac experience, but 6.x is not a joy.

  1. 3  Stuart McIntyre http://macsfacts.vox.com | 10/2/2006 10:44:40 AM

    Volker, whilst I tend to agree with you re: 6.x (and also previous versions), we need to be positive with 7.0.2 on the Mac platform.

    I believe that we (the IBM/partner community) haven't properly sold Notes into the typical Mac-using organisations for a number of years, and this is our chance to relaunch Notes as a viable collaboration environment into these environments.

    Whilst there will undoubtedly be issues with the 7.0.2 beta client, and probably be areas where we think IBM could improve it, lets be as positive as we can be about the efforts they are making.

  1. 4  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 10/2/2006 12:24:55 PM

    Stuart, I absolutely am. If IBM can build a Notes client for the Mac that is on par with the Windows client, I would see this as a complete success.

    However, I would be cautious to read too much into Mac users' enthusiasm. For those, who finally have a Notes client they can work with, it is going to be godsent. I don't expect to see new Notes business in the Mac space however. As such it may be a "must have", not a new opportunity.

    The interesting development in the Mac space is what Apple is doing with OS X server next year. When 10.5 is released there will be an iCal server which closes the main gap that people have when moving to open protocols. IMAP solves the mail problem, but not the calendar problem.

  1. 5  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 10/2/2006 4:24:01 PM

    @Volker - I haven't ever used a Mac, but I have heard lots of complaints about Notes on a Mac, in all releases. I understand it's a tremendous point of pain.

  1. 6  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 10/2/2006 4:38:10 PM

    Charles, almost four years ago I switched my main work environment to the Mac. I stuck two of those years with a Mac Notes client. I quickly moved my calendar and contacts out of Notes to make them sync with PDAs and mobile phones again, but I kept my mail on a Domino server. After a while I used IMAP in parallel to Notes. About 18 months ago I moved mail to a "real" IMAP server and I was blast away how fast mail could be. :-)

    In conclusion: Notes on the Mac killed the Domino server. That is why I think, that a good Notes client on the Mac maybe important. I talked to a customer today, and they have a single Mac on their network. It belongs to the CEO.

  1. 7  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 10/2/2006 4:39:15 PM

    I might add that the CEO is not "all thumbs".

  1. 8  Mike Brown  | 10/3/2006 3:41:31 AM

    I use the Mac client daily, and I don't find it significantly worse than the Wintel version. There were some font problems, which could be worked around, and the lack of the built-in instant messaging was a downer, but apart from that?

    It doesn't crash any more than the Wintel version (once or twice a week) and is not noticably slower, either.

    I'm talking about 6.5x here. Certainly, earlier versions of the Mac client were terrible. Version 5 was totally unusable until the 5.0.8 point release, but 6 has been well received here. Even the people that didn't like Notes all that much - and I'm talking about IT people here - were pleased to see it in a Carbon version, and getting a Universal Binary out while the likes of Adobe are still scratching their backsides is no mean feat either.

    Where Lotus has really fallen down in the Mac world is in the add-on and Web products - DWA, Sametime, Quickplace etc - rather than the main client itself. Thankfully, most of that is now changed or changing, except for Quickplace, which is still completely useless on the Mac.

    Cheers,

    - Mike

  1. 9  Ben Poole http://benpoole.com | 10/3/2006 4:33:40 AM

    @8: not significantly worse?? Eek! :o)

    Well, one stumbler for me was the total lack of Java support in 6.x for the Mac. I'm hoping that will be rectified in the gold release of 7.0.2 (it's still unavailable in the current beta I understand).

    7.0.2 is going to be good though: the improvements re how the application is actually installed on OS X are very welcome, just for starters!

  1. 10  Mike Brown  | 10/3/2006 5:59:32 AM

    @9 Nailed me! Yes, I'd completely forgotten about that one. And I can cofirm that Java agent support is still missing from the Notes 7 beta.

    However, I was thinking more of the end user experience when I posted earlier. And end users don't know or care if Java agents run on a Mac, however inconvenient it might be for the likes of us. It would be good if they fixed it though.

    Cheers,

    - Mike

  1. 11  Andy Wang  | 10/3/2006 3:39:09 PM

    I've been running the Mac 7.02 public beta 1 for a week now and think it is several orders of magnitude better than the 6.x client from a performance and usability stand point. Way to go, IBM!

    SameTime Mac beta 2 is buggy as heck and I'm looking forward to the next beta release.

    Ed, please pass it on to the powers that to PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE support Safari browser with DWA and Sametime web access.

    Thanks and I really enjoy reading your blogs.

  1. 12  David Bell  | 10/3/2006 10:49:17 PM

    @11 - are you also telling Apple to make sure Safari supports the standards properly ?

    As far as I am aware, limitations in the browser capabilities are part of the reason why DWA / ST support is a problem with Safari.

  1. 13  Todd Carpenter  | 10/4/2006 8:21:43 AM

    @8 - Mike we have a few Mac's in our environment, for the font issue have you tried the ini setting "Display_font_adjustment=5"? It seems to do the trick for a few of our clients.

  1. 14  Mike Brown  | 10/4/2006 5:06:38 PM

    @13 Yes thanks, Todd. The Display_font_adjustment trick is what I was referring to when I said the font problems "could be worked around".

    No longer required in 7.0.2 though!

    Cheers,

    - Mike

  1. 15  Ben Poole http://benpoole.com | 10/4/2006 5:53:32 PM

    I don't understand the issue with DWA and Safari. I *thought* it was down to LiveConnect, but Safari's supported that for some time now, so I guess it must be something very esoteric.