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LOTUSPHERE - IBM ripening Notes features for Macs

24.01.2006
IBM's Lotus Development Corp. unit has offered its Lotus Notes collaboration application for Apple Computer Inc.'s Macintosh hardware for years, but the software never included the depth of features available to Microsoft Windows users -- and it lacked much of the familiar Mac desktop look and feel.

Those shortcomings, however, may soon be history.

IBM Monday announced a major shift in its Notes for Mac strategy by unveiling plans in Orlando at the Lotusphere 2006 conference for a vastly improved Mac version.

Kevin Cavanaugh, vice president of development for Lotus clients, solutions and tools in IBM's Software Group, said the updates are coming later this year because IBM sees a need. 'We have sort of let Mac versions slip, so we're fixing that,' he said.

Version 7.02 of Notes for the Mac, slated for release in the third quarter of this year, will include integrated Lotus Sametime instant messaging and support for Macintosh computers that run on Intel Corp. chips. Notes 7.02 for the Mac will run on Mac OS X 10.4 'Tiger' operating system.

While Macintosh users still trail Windows users by a wide margin in corporate computing, they remain a force at companies' creative, design and production teams -- and a potential source of substantial revenue. As a result, Lotus decided to make its Notes for the Mac offering more useful and feature-rich, Cavanaugh said.