Somebody pinch me

by Volker Weber

What happens when a Notes fanboy also turns into an Apple fanboy?

You take this AP story and quote it on this blog, and then you watch the comments or postings in the echo chamber.

As Ed says:

OK, lots of interesting speculation here... not sure I can confirm or deny at this point except to say that I do not expect this to be part of 8.0.1.

Let's look at some facts:

So what are we expecting to see? An iPhone Safari client for Notes mail and calendaring written in Javascript, like Google has been delivering three months now? And when is IBM going to ship if not with 8.01?

Comments

Declan made the same comment about IMAP but you and I both know that Domino as IMAP is not that good for volume. I also want PIM information, not just email.

What I am really, really hoping for is a product that directly integrates into the iPhone interface ala traveller client in windows mobile. Im not going to lose sleep if its not push, and instead some sort of OTA replication, but I really really want to see this work.

So, I am a Notes fanboy (but not blind) and (you must accept some blame here) now a Mac fanboy. I'm just hoping to see it next week.

Paul Mooney, 2008-01-16

Shall I say, I would be surprised to see code on the iPhone?

Volker Weber, 2008-01-16

There are so many innovations and technical solutions to mail out there...it's nearly impossible to find something new that you can't "do today". I've been watching the response to this (Notes mail on iPhone) too, and think there's a definite difference between highly technical users finding a way to use a standard (imap) - one that Domino admins really don't particularly like to enable - and a partnership between IBM and Apple at the corporate level. It's a bigger deal than a setting or a protocol and deserves the airtime it's getting and will get next week.

About the other stuff, getting Symphony being free is cool even if it's older. And IBM has already announced a major initiative to catch the codebase up by donating developers to the OpenOffice.org effort, so it won't be old for long. It'll run faster on my MacBook than my XP I'm sure. That said the Symphony/Office decision doesn't interest me as much as I use the superior (keynote and pages anyway, numbers I haven't used much) iWork 08 without significant interoperability issues, though I don't share documents so much as deliver them as PDFs. Which is real easy on the Mac, PDF generation as you know is built in and faster than anything I've seen.

You're right Notes for Mac is late, I do yearn for Designer and Admin, and think IBM will someday just have to deliver as Macs become more entrenched in the technical and executive office. I'm running Eclipse and Aptana on the Mac and the most obvious time for Designer to be ported will be when it's in Eclipse. I'm hoping the number of presenters at LS with Macs will help send that message.

Rob Novak, 2008-01-16

Very interesting as we're one of the majority of large corporates who are committed to Vodafone ;O)

IMAP works just fine on the Nokia E90 too, no iPhone required but as Paul says we need PIM info too.

We don't need ANOTHER client, what we really need is for Domino to loosen up a little and support some open calendar standards.

(Note for Volker - probably contradicts something I wrote on here ages ago, I think I'm maturing)

Ben Rose, 2008-01-16

Rob, do you have any background on the "development on corporate level"? How would they devote so much attention on just the iPhone if the Mac is lagging far behind.

Volker Weber, 2008-01-16

Hey I love this blog ;-)

Regarding the "When will they deliver" question.

Based on the upcoming LotusPhere session-names and descriptions, and on history how previous versions are released, my guess is that there will be mac-support in the version after 8.01, properbly named 8.5, and I believe it will be announced at Lotusphere, and be ready 2H2008, properbly at the end of Q3. I think mac-support will be announced for most of the "bigger" Lotus products.

Are they late...yep....BUT i do believe it will be succesful anyway
I have a few customers waiting patient for the mac-support. They already upgraded their webmail to 8...just to have the experience ;-)

See you at LSP08

Thomas Stokking, 2008-01-16

Ups...and it will state the 12-18 months development cycle ;-)

Thomas Stokking, 2008-01-16

I love this blog too.

Mac support is announced at Lotusphere 2007 already for Notes 8. Until today we have no beta code available which drives me really grazy.

Microsoft has already the new MS Office 2008 UB available, which comes with support for Microsoft Exchange Servers.

IMHO there is no need for a lotus symphony at all, we have openoffice, neooffice which already supports ms office 2007 format on mac. I would really prefer that IBM finishs first things first: Lotus Notes 8 for Mac without Lotus Documents.

In my opinion iPhone with Webinterface for Domino Web Access would be just another marketing gag.

A native Lotus Notes iPhone client should support the following features:

- Search for emails, which is not available with the iphone today, can you imagine to work with BlackBerry without the search option today?
- secure connection which is necessary
- Push Email serverbased, which is the defacto standard of mobile solutions
- Invitation management: accept meetings, reschedule meetings - especially this features I am really missing with the Iphone and this is my reason why it is not usable in a corporate environment, Imap does not support this features
- full support of notes encrypted emails
- support of notes doclinks
- sametime awareness

It should come with up2date notes 8 features not with the pim features of Lotus Notes 3.11

wishlist:

- native sametime client
- quickr connector support for iphone


I really hope the lotus community is getting a native (based on the upcoming SDK) iphone client to support all the excellent day by day lotus notes features which are uncovered by googlemail, .mac, yahoo .. imap based accounts.


cu at ls08

marco


Volker thank You very much for opening the Apple doors! Live is changed and much better!

marco foellmer, 2008-01-17

Marco, if you ask me, you will get nothing of what you are asking for. IBM will be presenting an iPhone-friendly web interface to Notes mail. And hopefully for calendar as well.

My iPhone and Mac both process Notes invitations with the native applications Mail and iCal. This is to be expected, as long as Lotus uses standard calendar formats as they are doing with meeting invitations. Unfortunately Lotus does not use standard protocols interfacing the server, otherwise you could store your calendar items via CalDAV on the Domino server. IMAP is supported, but very poorly.

Doclinks are also very proprietary but could easily be turned into URIs.

Volker Weber, 2008-01-17

IMAP is useful for a thin client access to the mailbox, but there is no way to get at custom apps or calendar on a PDA device. Lotus came out pretty strong with the Palm syncs back in like 96, but it all seem to fall apart. The palm was great even syncing some custom db info to and from a handheld.

Still stuck on 7.03 on a Mac, which since that release IBM should be able to keep up a little better with it's Mac Releases.

Bryan McDade, 2008-01-17

Bryan,

Lotus were pretty strong with Palm Sync back in the day...they called it EasySync. If I remember correctly, they bought technology from a 3rd party company, brought it in-house and then pretty much stopped developing it.

Not sure how true, but I heard a lot of the dev guys ended up at Symbian and re-created it all as Nokia PC Suite.

Ben Rose, 2008-01-17

Ben, do some research. EasySync 4.x is an OEM version of XTND Connect from Extended Systems.

Volker Weber, 2008-01-17

In case anyone had not seen it, there is a session on this at Lotusphere.

Session date 01/22/2008
Session time 3:00pm - 4:00pm
Session location SW 7-10
Session name "Big Mac Attack": IBM Lotus Notes and other Lotus Offerings on the Mac Platform

Session abstract Apple's desktop marketshare continues to increase, and chances are you already have a sizeable Mac population in your organization (or may soon). Come learn more about Mac platform support for Lotus Notes, IBM Lotus Domino Web Access, IBM Lotus Sametime, and other offerings across the Lotus portfolio. We'll also show a live demo of Lotus Notes 8.5 on the Mac, and provide you with information on participating in the Lotus Notes 8.5 beta.

So we are skipping 8.0.1 and going straight to 8.5? This is worrying. When is 8.5 going to be released?

Andy Mell, 2008-01-18

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