Yesterday at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco,
California, IBM announced the release of Lotus Notes & Domino version
8.5 and why do it at MacWorld, well because this release is the first in
the Notes 8 codestream to include a client built specifically for Mac OS
X. With the press watching Apple’s last appearance at MacWorld this release
announcement has also been in the limelight and was reported across a wide
variety of news outlets and the blogs of the apple faithful.
Some of the Apple faithful are also
part of the Lotus faithful and, like myself, the first component of the
Lotus 8.5 released that was downloaded and installed was the new client
for Mac OS X. The installation process was quick and easy and the initial
setup appears in exactly the same way as all the past setups for the MS
Windows client, in fact you will be hard pressed to find any major differences
between the MS Windows and Mac OS X version of the client. The design and
development teams at IBM have done an excellent job at ensuring a familiar
interface across all the platforms that Notes & Domino 8.5 supports
which also includes clients for RedHat Linux and OpenSuse Linux as well
as the Mac OS X and MS Windows platforms.
Of course different platforms will have
their slight differences and one such difference on the Mac OS X platform
is the integration of Lotus Notes into Spotlight. When it is enabled all
local databases can be setup to be included in Spotlight searches. If you
are a user of Spotlight to find information on your computer then you will
love this feature. You can turn it on under the Action -> Desktop Search
menu option.
After using the previous two public
beta releases of the Lotus Notes 8.5 client for the Mac, I can certainly
say that this final gold release really is worth the upgrade from the last
official Lotus Notes client on the Mac which was Notes 7.0.3. Version 8.5
is snappier, looks great and really brings the entire IBM Lotus portfolio
to a greater visibility within any enterprise that uses Apple computers.
Also announced at MacWorld Expo was
the impending release of IBM Lotus Symphony V1.2.1 for the Mac OS X. Lotus
Symphony is a FREE eclipse based version of OpenOffice that uses the same
interface as the Notes 8.5 client. This release is expected to be downloadable
towards the end of January, probably during Lotusphere, IBM’s own conference
for their followers, the Lotus faithful. You’ll see me there, probably
sitting in the front row with my Macbook Air on my lap taking notes.
Dec's Dom Blog 