IBM Lotus announces availability of Notes 8.5 and Symphony 1.2.1 at Macworld Expo

January 6 2009

Live from the Moscone Center in San Francisco...

IBM today announced that the new IBM Lotus Notes 8.5 collaboration software with social computing features, is now available for all Mac OS X Leopard-powered computers.  In addition, IBM's free Lotus Symphony document, spreadsheet and presentation software will be available later this month for the Mac.

IBM Lotus Notes and Domino software, celebrating its 20th year in 2009, has grown to more than 140 million licenses sold worldwide.

"To ease the mounting pressure on businesses to constrain costs, Notes 8.5 provides 'open' social computing benefits at substantial savings to businesses because less storage space is needed," said Kevin Cavanaugh, vice president, messaging and collaboration, IBM.

"The blazing speed of Apple's award-winning hardware combined with Mac OS X, the world's most advanced operating system creates an ideal platform for collaboration software applications like Notes," said Ron Okamoto, Apple's vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations. "We're excited to see IBM's continued commitment to the Mac platform with its latest release."

Lotus Notes 8.5 affords significant storage savings over previous versions. Notes has an intelligent storage savings feature that ensures that only one copy of an attachment is kept on the mail server, resulting in an estimated 40 percent space savings.

"Notes 8.5 has allowed our Mac users to make full use of a non-Microsoft environment with all the advances of the latest Notes functionality," said Mark Calleran, Chief Information Officer, The Salvation Army, International Headquarters.
The entire Notes/Domino 8.5 release became electronically available in English earlier today.  Obviously, this multi-year effort has many facets -- a Domino server that majors in "messaging economics" for administrators, XPages and new tools to reinvigorate the Domino web application development environment, and the first Notes 8 deliverable for the Macintosh.  We chose the approach of announcing Notes 8.5 and Symphony's Mac release at Macworld Expo to highlight the surge of activity around Apple in the enterprise, and why, working together with Apple, we see IBM Lotus as a key piece of the Apple+enterprise equation.

Symphony 1.2.1, which includes the first Mac OS X version of Symphony, is expected to ship before Lotusphere.  

The decision to release 8.5 today and announce at Macworld Expo will attract a lot more mainstream media attention for Notes and Symphony than if we had waited for Lotusphere or quietly released in the last week of 2008.  I love the surprise factor., too, though it has been admittedly different to sign up for a "no pre-announce" approach.  Hopefully the hints and comments I made during December now become clear.  Our engineering organization knew the importance of meeting their goal to complete this project in 2008, but for a change, we decided that the marketing opportunity was much stronger to coincide with our first ever exhibition of Notes at Macworld Expo.

At Lotusphere, we will clearly emphasize the fullness of the Notes/Domino 8.5 family, right from the opening general session.  Today, we focus on the end-user -- and from what I've seen in the first two hours that the Macworld Expo has been open, we're opening quite a few eyes.

In the midst of all of this, PSC upgraded this blog server to Domino 8.5 -- and it took all of about ten minutes, no risk.  Very cool!

Links to information and coverage below.

Link: Channel Announcement: Notes/Domino 8.5 >
Link: IBM Delivers New "Social" Notes and Free Symphony Software for All Macs >
Link: Notes 8.5 screen shots on Flickr >

Introducing IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5
View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: ibm lotus)


Link: CBRonline: IBM makes notes on Mac users >
Link: Computerworld: Macworld: IBM finalizing free Symphony office suite for Macs >
Link: Mass High Tech: Lotus Notes 8.5 land on Mac OS X >
Link: Website: http://www.ibm.com/software/lotus/notesanddomino
Link: Reviewer's Guide: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/documentation/d-ls-ndreviewersguide/index.html
Link: Flyer - 'What's new in IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5': ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/common/ssi/pm/fy/n/lof10860usen/LOF10860USEN.PDF

IBM Lotus at Macworld Expo

Ed Brill | Moscone Convention Center - North Hall Category:  Notes and Domino 8.5  Add/View Comments [40]

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  1. 1  Stuart McIntyre http://blog.collaborationmatters.com | 1/6/2009 3:15:52 PM

    Ed, Congratulations on the 8.5 announcement and the method of delivering the news. A real splash has been made in the mainstream IT news outlets today, and that's awesome for Lotus Notes and Domino.

    As a fairly vocal Mac fan, I've been pushing Lotus to "hang on the coat tails of Apple" for a while now, and today's efforts have done just that. I was doubtful about the wisdom of holding back the shipment of 8.5 into 2009 - I'm happy to say I was wrong ;-)

  1. 2  Aaron Sprunger  | 1/6/2009 3:23:45 PM

    Is there any news on the iPhone & Lotus Notes? Notes Traveler coming soon...or at all??

    Glad 8.5 came out before Lotusphere too. All that I learn in FL can hopefully be applied immediately.

  1. 3  Dimitris  | 1/6/2009 3:29:41 PM

    any news for Domino Designer in MacOS X?

  1. 4  Terry  | 1/6/2009 3:35:47 PM

    Are we ever going to see Domino Designer in Mac?

  1. 5  Carlos  | 1/6/2009 3:51:13 PM

    I also want to know if anything is happening on the iPhone side. Any glimmer of hope that proper integration/sync is coming and if so when ?

  1. 6  Silvia Garcia http://www.itssa.es | 1/6/2009 4:08:15 PM

    @ 3 Would we see it under Linux ? I just migrated to Ubuntu, would love to have not only notes client, but also Domino Administrator and Designer there... currently, I have to use VMWARE for designer.. can not wait till have Designer on linux, is the only thing I missing !!

  1. 7  Silvia Garcia http://www.itssa.es | 1/6/2009 4:12:54 PM

    Uhmm... sorry ed, I am always asking the same..... :-) What about the spanish language ? I am willing to have the languaga packs !! Please, please, please...

  1. 8  Steven  | 1/6/2009 4:18:42 PM

    Ed: Thanks for throwing a wet blanket on our ND8.0.2 roll-out ;-)

  1. 9  Stuart McIntyre http://blog.collaborationmatters.com | 1/6/2009 4:18:45 PM

    @7 All the details are in the announcement letter that Ed links to:

    Electronic software delivery:

    * January 6, 2009 : English

    * January 15, 2009: Catalan, Chinese-Traditional and Simplified, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Portuguese-Brazilian, Spanish, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, Finnish

    * January 15, 2009: Macintosh for French, German, and Japanese

    * February 11, 2009: Macintosh for Catalan, Chinese-Traditional and Simplified, Korean, Italian, Portuguese-Brazilian, Spanish, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, Finnish

    * March 10, 2009: Arabic, Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovenian, Slovakian,Turkish, Thai

  1. 10  Mark Hughes  | 1/6/2009 4:44:56 PM

    Thanks for the great release, i know we are all excited about version 8.5.

    I too .... am wondering, on the 1 year anniversary of the announced Exchange / iPhone over the air sync, what progress has been made with Lotus Notes syncing with the iPhone in a similar manner. I understand the complexity and the Other vendor aspect, just wondering how things are going?

  1. 11  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 1/6/2009 4:50:33 PM

    OK, OK, enough with the iPhone, it's called MACworld Expo :-) I hear ya all, just it's not *today's* focus.

  1. 12  Bob Balaban http://bobzblog.com | 1/6/2009 4:52:09 PM

    Congratulations!

  1. 13  Christer Eklundh  | 1/6/2009 4:57:11 PM

    Ed, love the news, love 8.5 and love the slides, it's very good! Christmas came early this year... :-)

  1. 14  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 1/6/2009 5:01:06 PM

    Another Domino release adding more capabilities and delivering features to lower the cost of ownership. And it's a straight upgrade from previous releases. And the product has a roadmap.

  1. 15  Tom  | 1/6/2009 5:05:22 PM

    I just installed 8.5 on my macs. The font size in the mail template is much smaller than what it was in the beta releases. I would almost say that this is pretty much useless, especially trying to see the details of the grayed out 'read messages'. Why was this changed? It looked fine before. Please tell me there's a workaround. I've tried the different themes including the "low vision" theme and the font is still too small. We've waited so long for this release I'm trying not to be extremely disappointed.

  1. 16  Silvia Garcia http://www.itssa.es | 1/6/2009 5:11:08 PM

    @9 Wow !!! incredible!! I remenber not far ago, when it took 60 days to have international releases......... And my first surprise when this changed on 8.0 (it also took a week).

    Please, keep on this way...

  1. 17  Kim Hansen  | 1/6/2009 5:21:09 PM

    I thought that the Domino Designer 8.5 would be released for Linux and Mac and not only for Windows? Is this coming in a few days or are we going to wait for 8.5.1 or 8.6 or 9?

    I'm very happy to see support for Linux destributions like Ubuntu (I'm using OpenSUSE today). Will IBM ever support the "open" versions of Linux'es like OpenSUSE 11.0 or 11.1? And when will you have support for Ubuntu 8.10?

    I know several companies that use a mix of OpenSUSE 11.x and Ubuntu 8.10 and they will be upgrading to 8.5 sooner than you think. If it doesn't work then I hope that IBM will very soon release a 8.5.1 with support for these versions as well.

    It would be great if IBM could create a FAQ wiki or something similar where all of these questions could be given and answered. I'm not asking for a specific date for all this - just a hint as to when we might see it. Like Q2 2009 or something.

    By the way... CONGRATULATIONS on the 8.5 release. I'm looking forward to working with it.

  1. 18  Erik Brooks  | 1/6/2009 5:32:12 PM

    Congratulations Ed and everybody else at IBM (and recently departed from IBM, e.g. Bob) that had a hand in this.

    Here's hoping 8.5.1 and 9 continue the momentum of massive leaps forward.

  1. 19  Henry Ferlauto http://www.geniusinside.com | 1/6/2009 6:00:49 PM

    Congratulations on a job well done. Kudos to all that decided to make MacWorld Expo the launch event.

    Do you guys have iPhones at the booth showing off ultralite?

    Also, when is the website going to get updated? All the Notes and Domino pages are still showing 8.5 as beta.

    { Link }

  1. 20  Thomas Coustenoble http://www.netvibes.com/tcoustenoble | 1/6/2009 6:33:21 PM

    @19 Henry, Notes and Domino website pages will be updated in upcoming hours.

  1. 21  Pete Janzen  | 1/6/2009 6:40:33 PM

    Domino Designer 8.5 is Windows only. While we know there is a strong desire for Mac and Linux support, we can't commit to a future release when this will be delivered.

  1. 22  Tony Frazier  | 1/6/2009 7:17:55 PM

    @15 I noticed this too (but not to the point of being useless). I changed the Font setting in Preferences to Large Fonts; this is matching closer to the Windows setting of Normal, at least on my machine.

    @Ed, congratulations on the release!

  1. 23  Tom  | 1/6/2009 7:49:25 PM

    #22: In my experience increasing the font size in the ini or preference file is not a viable option. The enlarged text ends up running into dialog box titles and another elements, essentially it just doesn't fit. Also, some fonts change and others simply don't.

    Notes font size on the mac is one of the biggest gripes users have with the client. The fact that this was seemingly "fixed" in the beta then "broken" again when the software was finally released blows my mind.

    Does anyone else see this or am I living in the twilight zone?

  1. 24  Gregg Eldred http://www.ns-tech.com/blog/geldred.nsf | 1/6/2009 7:59:49 PM

    Hey, I know that guy in the picture! "Hi, David!" :-)

    This is going to be the best Lotusphere. Ever.

  1. 25  Scott  | 1/6/2009 8:02:28 PM

    Couldn't wait to try out the new version. Downloaded it, but it won't install. Keeps saying C:\ drive does not have sufficient space to extract package. C: drive has over 6GB and I'm extracting to another drive with over 35 GB??

    I really want to try xpages, but what a let down.

  1. 26  Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net | 1/6/2009 10:29:18 PM

    Congratulations to everyone involved. I wish Lotus, its partners and customers the best for 2009.

    Kim, I've started a FAQ wiki page here { Link } This is a wiki, so EVERYONE can keep it up to date, not just me. (hint hint)

  1. 27  Dvir Reznik http://dvirreznik.blogspot.com | 1/7/2009 7:53:22 AM

    Ed,

    Congrats on the 8.5 release! Excellent enhancements, I'm sure the market will appreciate the hard work Lotus Dev did on this release.

    Good to see David Via again (met him in Spain last April.. ;-)

    Again, congrats!

  1. 28  Tom  | 1/7/2009 10:09:08 AM

    While I'm sure the 8.5 Macintosh client release is a big improvement in many ways the same nagging font size issue that Macintosh uses have been griping about since release 5 is still there. What makes this even worse is that this issue was seemingly addressed in the beta releases but not in 8.5. I've never found adjusting the font magnification size in the preference file to be a viable option so please don't suggest that. You would have to blow the font up large enough that text would start to interfere with various other design elements such as dialog box titles.

    The font clarity in the Operating System Theme is better, but overall it's not as nice as the Notes 8 Theme. In addition to the small size of the font - in the Notes 8 Theme Inbox, subject lines there is an extra space visible between "w's" and the next proceeding character in the word. This looks really bad. I have screen shots if anyone is interested and plan to report this issue to Lotus Support.

    I am very disappointed by this release for these reasons since it keeps me in the same tired position of constantly defending this product to my Macintosh users. Although I believe in notes and have been working with it for a long time this is enough of a reason for me to advocate moving off it as an e-mail client, since I can hardly stand using it myself.

  1. 29  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 1/7/2009 10:51:39 AM

    Tom, two vice presidents and several other key people in the Notes organization run 8.5 on the Mac. I checked with one yesterday and he said he's seen only an extremely minor font difference between beta abd GA.

    If there is really a problem, opening a support incident would be much more useful than making multiple comments about it on my blog.

  1. 30  John Head http://www.johndavidhead.com | 1/7/2009 11:09:42 AM

    @28 Tom - it sounds like you are having some unexpected issues that others are not seeing. Long time mac folks like Declan Lynch ({ Link } ) and Bill Buchan ({ Link } ) have written about their first experiences with the Notes 8.5 Standard Client on the Mac. If they were have the same issue, they would have no problem posting about it publically. So my suggestion would be to call support. If you don't want to, ping one of them.

  1. 31  Damjan Perenic  | 1/7/2009 9:37:43 PM

    MacWorld also picked the story. User comments are mostly positive ({ Link }

    It is indeed a bit ironic, that Notes 8.5 (Standard) and Symphony are one of the first Intel only Mac OS X applications without PowerPC support (besides virtualization ones, but that is understandable).

  1. 32  Eric Eskam  | 1/8/2009 4:18:02 PM

    re: iPhone - after attending the local Apple Enterprise roadshow and talking with the IBM and Apple folks on site, I'd say they both "get it". Better integration is definitely coming, and no I didn't get a time frame (how about "When it's done!" :) - but I'm at least relieved that both IBM and Apple are in sync (ha!)

  1. 33  MarvinK  | 1/8/2009 7:56:39 PM

    There seems to be other new bugs in the final that weren't in the beta. The mailbox sorting is one of them that was driving me nuts:

    { Link }

  1. 34  Nazeer Aval http://www.sbm.com.sa | 1/9/2009 2:23:11 PM

    I just upgraded to Notes 8.5. Excellent performance noticed. Also excited some cool features like RTE Signature.

  1. 35  Kim  | 1/15/2009 4:27:29 AM

    @21 Pete - as long as you are saying "WHEN this will be delivered" instead of "IF" I'm satisfied. IBM have been pushing Linux for so many years now, so it would not make any sense not to make Lotus Domino Designer for Linux (and Mac).

  1. 36  Chris  | 1/15/2009 2:46:59 PM

    "Symphony 1.2.1, which includes the first Mac OS X version of Symphony, is expected to ship before Lotusphere. "

    Are you actually going to make us wait until Friday/Saturday to release this? Boo!

  1. 37  Richard Graham  | 1/26/2009 7:37:33 AM

    Ed, the 8.5 Notes client is fine, but the Designer client is just terrible. It is far slower and sludgier than it used to be, you have to double click elements to access them, it rebuilds view indexes when you have only added actions to a view (taking ages on large views), meaning it is impossible to quickly test script. Sorry but the Design client is a real clunker, and I can even run the Basic designer any more. This is an absolute disaster for me, it is nigh-on unusable. Sorry. I've never felt this way about an upgrade before... I've given it a couple of weeks, it is a nightmare.

  1. 38  Marcel Damseaux  | 2/12/2009 5:10:55 PM

    Same here, I wish there was a possibility to run the old designer in 8.5 when we don't want to use the new functionality. It's just too slow.

    I was looking for some tricks, but seems I will have to install 8.0.2 along with the 8.5.

  1. 39  Alan Hamilton  | 4/30/2009 2:52:20 AM

    Re fonts on the Mac - edit the Notes Preferences file (~/Library/Preferences folder) with Text Edit. Add the line

    Display_font_adjustment=n

    where n is the number of points added to the default size and is a number between -1 and 25. For example, if you want to increase the font size by 3 points, you would type:

    Display_font_adjustment=3

    Caution Using a value of 4 or higher may result in formatting problems.