Lotus Notes is coming to the iPhone

Wow ... some serious Notes haters out there ... always surprises me when people lash out against Notes and point to Exchange as the better option. Try writing a database application for a team of 300 people in 6 region offices across the U.S. to collaborate in real time using Exchange? For that matter, try writing a database application at all in Exchange. Notes/Domino is a platform like no other on the market and the world would be worse off without it ... hundreds of millions of users world-wide agree. As far as Notes on the iPhone, It was a disappointment when IBM and Apple couldn't get together on it. This Web version is at least a step. Plug on Team Lotus, somebody still thinks you're cool.

I seem to remember using Outlook to access Notes servers at one time. There was some reason to not populate all of the business apps to group of new users who just needed email and calendering.

Did that functionality go away?

When I first began to use Notes, I was depressed because I didn't get to work in outlook. After using Notes for awhile - I would never want to go back to outlook. I have a lot of issues with the Notes Interface, but Notes 7 and 8 are so much better than my outlook experience. Also, the Sametime IM integration has completely changed how I do my work and how efficient I am. BTW - if you have ever had to administer exchange and then had the ability to administer Notes - you would never bitch about Notes again.

I used to work for Lotus when they were still here in the Cambridge, MA area. Good company. Sad to see what has happened to their software. I use Lotus Notes now and I hate the damned thing. But most of my hate is because I got too used to MS Outlook I guess.

I'm not one to post usually on this repeated debate every time an article about notes comes to the web, but seriously I don't understand why people even bother comparing Exchange with Notes.

The only major similarities that they have is that they do calendaring, scheduling, and email. (The primary focus i suppose)

Now that we've talked about what exchange can do, Lotus notes is a collaboration suite to run your entire business, on a simple development platform which domino designer offers you can code up pretty much anything you want. You are only limited by your knowledge and programming abilities (this is why Notes developers get paid well).

So Exchange and Notes should not be compared as black and white. Because in my opinion they are not in the same league.

Good luck setting up Exchange with Microsoft CRM, any EDI application, or anything else that needs to "plug in" to outlook. You can do the same 10 years ago in Lotus notes and not have to worry about compatibility as it's all one platform.

User experience is exceptionally important and as it's been stated lotus notes 8 is moving in the right direction, It's a shame people don't see the power behind it.

It looks like this is just the standard iNotes with a iPhone web app interface. I think the "App" is actually the Lotus Mobile VPN software. I put up with a company that uses Notes.... it sucks.

Just a side note, but this a very bizarre blog. Comments seem to appear and disappear randomly.
And I've tried in Firefox and (gasp) IE just to see.

.strange.

Excuse my ignorance, but what benefits do Proprietary Groupware solutions like Exchange and Notes have over Open Standard Soultions like LDAP, IMAP and iCal?

ITGuy has it 95% right. The only change I'd make is his reference to "MS upgrade treadmill". You don't upgrade Exchange to a new version, you MIGRATE your Exchange users to a new set of Exchange serverS. This has been true for 5.5, 2000, 2003, and now 2007. M$ has trained it's adherent's that that's the way it it.

Contrast that to an upgrade I did this week: We went from Notes/Domino 6.5.4 to 8.0.1 by putting the CD in and running setup.exe. And then pushed the clients out automatically using the builtin smartupgrade. Night and day.

Some people may be excited, but I just can't get over the feeling I got from having to use Notes. It felt like a part of me died every time I had to open it. It was like another car ran over the puppy of my soul. Notes had the Worst User Experience Ever. I may have hated Windows 9x too, but only Notes made me hate myself for using it.

Scratch that. Anything with "Rational" in the name also tended to crush my spirit. Strange how they're both IBM brands...