Lotus Notes 8.5 for Macintosh public beta now available

January 20 2008

Twice in the last 12 hours, I have heard about people learning of news related to their own product through weblogs.  At dinner last night, Jeff Eisen admitted to me that he had learned about a new feature in Notes 8.0.1 through edbrill.com.  Jeff, for those who don't know, is the Chief Architect for Lotus Notes.  Hey, not everybody can know everything, and so after some good-natured ribbing about this (and permission to blog it), I smiled about the amount of innovation and progression going on in our space, and how even the best collaboration tools still can't help everyone keep track of it all.

Then, this morning at breakfast, it happened to me.

I was sitting at Business Development Day breakfast (7 AM EST, for those keeping score at home) at a table with Kevin Cavanaugh, the VP of Notes/Domino products, Bruce Elgort, Mike Smith, Nathan and Lisa Freeman, Matt White, and a few others.  I glanced briefly at my Blackberry, where mobile.planetlotus.org was on the screen.  And I saw a blog post title that stunned me:

Public beta of Lotus Notes 8.5 -- for the Mac! 

The things that happen while one is sleeping.  (Sleep != Lotusphere)

Kevin told me that indeed, my eyes did not deceive, the public beta for the Lotus Notes 8.5 client for Macintosh has now been posted on developerWorks.  Looking forward to your feedback!

Ed Brill Lotusphere 2008 Category:  Notes and Domino 8  Add/View Comments [20]

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  1. 1  Paul Mooney http://www.pmooney.net | 1/20/2008 7:43:53 AM

    Currently downloading... its slow, but I will put it on a stick for anyone at Lotusphere thats trying to download it.

  1. 2  Lee  | 1/20/2008 9:16:57 AM

    I think that should be "Sleep ∉ Lotusphere", rather != ;)

  1. 3  Ian Scott  | 1/20/2008 9:18:55 AM

    Hey, Mac dudes! Patience id, as they say, a virtue. 8-D

  1. 4  Declan Lynch http://www.qtzar.com | 1/20/2008 10:01:19 AM

    The download is a .tar file and when unzipped it seems to contain a linux Domino server install. Looks like the wrong package was released on the download site.

  1. 5  Lance Spellman http://www.workflowstudios.com/lance/blog.nsf | 1/20/2008 10:22:53 AM

    In my case, it looks like a Solaris server install. I've posted a screen shot, { Link }

  1. 6  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 1/20/2008 10:32:04 AM

    @4 / @5, I've alerted the program manager.

  1. 7  Mike Brown  | 1/20/2008 3:03:45 PM

    There's Standard and Basic versions too, which is good. Although the Standard is for "Intel processors only".

    Cheers,

    - Mike

  1. 8  Tripp Black http://www.mindwatering.com | 1/20/2008 3:10:54 PM

    #6 (Ed) Thanks for notifying the program manager. So, when will the "real" Mac beta be posted?

    Rather champing at the bit to install it! We've been looking forward to this release. For those of us not making it to Lotusphere the 8.01 relase and the Mac release has been still something to anticipate.

    Have fun. Post when you get a break.

  1. 9  Sarah Lachance  | 1/20/2008 5:11:59 PM

    The file issues have been corrected and confirmed. Happy downloading!

    Sarah

  1. 10  Ken Barker  | 1/20/2008 9:55:47 PM

    Ahhh! I take one day off from reading the blog and look what happens...

  1. 11  Alan Bell http://www.dominux.co.uk | 1/21/2008 1:12:24 AM

    still looks like a 730MB tar file to me. I guess it will look different when it is updated?

  1. 12  Andy  | 1/21/2008 6:31:03 AM

    So did anyone manage to get the beta to work? I am not having much luck. Tried an install over the top of my Notes 7 client. Does not work, just freezes after you login. Tried a clean install (as clean as i can make it) and it freezes again. Please let us know if this works for you...

  1. 13  Kerr  | 1/21/2008 7:12:46 AM

    @12, according to { Link } it works, but you need leopard.

  1. 14  Andy  | 1/21/2008 7:05:49 PM

    I got it working now. Works very nicely and surprisingly fast for an eclipse application. I eventually, after much teeth grinding, tracked the problem down to a corrupt full text index of the local names.nsf. The same db worked perfectly in Notes 7.0.3 but not in 8.5.

    Lesson learned here is that before upgrading we need to make sure everything is 100% in the previous version.

  1. 15  Mike Brown  | 1/21/2008 8:20:57 PM

    I'm getting a "postflight script for expeditor failed to run" error at the end of the install process. (I've posted this four times in the Beta forum, but none of them have showed up).

    I tried as clean an install as I could, but maybe I'm missing something. It prompts me to login as a Superuser, which I do okay.

    Installing on a Macbook Pro running OSX 10.5.1.

    Cheers,

    - Mike

  1. 16  Bill Brown  | 1/22/2008 2:19:44 PM

    What's the scoop on beta clients for Notes 8.5 on other platforms?

  1. 17  Hiro  | 1/23/2008 7:38:56 PM

    Can I finally read Japanese emails in this release???

  1. 18  Ying Le  | 1/26/2008 1:51:20 PM

    @17, yes, you can read Japanese emails using the public beta.

  1. 19  Damjan Perenic  | 1/26/2008 5:42:24 PM

    @18 Can you read Japanese emails also with Basic version? Standard version is not and will not be available on PPC platform. :( Notes 7.0 on Mac OS X has very poor support for non Latin 1 characters, therefore I wonder if there is any improvement in Notes Client Basic 8.5.

  1. 20  Removed  | 8/12/2008 11:17:27 PM

    Removed - no anonymous comments allowed.