Is Big Blue about to go Mac?

Well, not really. Roughly Drafted Magazine has obtained a document which describes a pilot program at IBM that has employees using Macs for their day-to-day work. Now, they aren't looking to ditch Windows in favor of Mac OS entirely. Instead, IBM wants to have diverse operating systems available to employees. From the document:

"Research is focusing on providing an IBM application stack on multiple Operating Systems, rather than be confined to one or the other."

At the end of the program's first phase, a full 86% of participants asked to keep their Macs, leaving comments like "It has been easier learning the Mac than learning Vista" and "Getting wireless running was a piece of cake on the Mac, much simpler than the PC" (amen to that, brother). Of course, this is probably an easier sell now that IBM doesn't make PCs any more.

Someone cue the chick with the sledgehammer.

[Via Infinite Loop]

According to Information Week, sources "with knowledge of IBM's plans" have confirmed that IBM will be releasing a version of its email client, Lotus Notes, for the iPhone (and iPod touch) at the Lotusphere conference next week. Plans for this were announced in October last year after Steve Jobs announced an iPhone SDK coming in February. Notes has been previously available on your Mac, but this release would give iPhone users mobile access to all of the Notes tools, including e-mail, calendars and databases.

The Notes news, along with IBM's Wednesday announcement that it will be porting its Informix 11 'Cheetah' database server to Leopard, and reports that Symphony (the productivity suite based on the OpenOffice.org project) is headed for OS X give rise to speculation that IBM may be gearing up to take a bite out of Microsoft via some strategic partnering with Apple. And for Apple, support from IBM could lead to gaining ground in the enterprise arena. Would more IBM software on the Mac (and iPhone) cause a stir in the Microsoft-dominated business world? I guess we're about to find out.

We first blogged about Lotus Note's Mac support in January of this year, and now it would seem IBM has fully delivered on the promise. As eWEEK reports Lotus Notes 7.02 offers full OS X support (10.4.2 or higher is required) and it is Universal so both PPC Macs and Intel Macs can share in the love. As you can see from the screenshot above Lotus Note's UI still looks like IBM software, but it looks like that on Windows, Linux, and OS X which is important. Not only is the client supported on the Mac, but Lotus Notes Web Access now works on the Mac as well, which I am sure is good news for people who use Macs at home.

Check out IBM's website for more details and screenshots of Lotus Notes running on Tiger.

In the news today, Apple announced that Donald J. Rosenberg, senior vice president and general counsel of IBM, will be moving to Apple to take over similar duties there. "We're thrilled to welcome such a seasoned professional to our executive team," said Steve Jobs, according to today's Apple press release. "Don has a broad range of experience that includes litigation, securities, intellectual property and antitrust, and he will be responsible for overseeing all legal matters and government affairs for Apple."

TUAW is curious to see how Mr. Rosenberg handles the matter of the messy $85 million in stock options recently discussed on this weblog.

Adrien Lamothe, writing for ONLamp.com, thinks that Apple has gotten itself into a position where their real competition isn't the likes of Dell but rather Sony and IBM. Is he referring to Sony's VAIO series of machines? Nope, he thinks that the Playstation III which will sport IBM's Cell processor will blow Macs out of the water.

Somehow, I doubt it considering that the Playstation, while computer like, has been designed to be a gaming machine. Want to do all your Internet surfer via your game console? I don't.

I know what you're thinking. Both me and fellow blogger Dave Caolo were asking each other the same question: "Lotus Notes still exists?"

But seriously, if there is a sign of the times - especially corporate times - this could certainly be one of them: IBM will announce at Lotusphere next week that the next client version of their Lotus Notes software will support OS X (while version 6.5 of Lotus Notes supports 10.3, version 7 doesn't support OS X at all). They will also be announcing support for Intel-based Macs, due later this year. As reasoning for this newfound OS X support, a representative for an IBM partner is quoted in an InformationWeek article saying: "We have a lot of health-care customers and maybe 1 percent of a company’s research department is on Macs but they have 99 percent of the influence."

The article also contains speculation from industry observers that this new friendliness IBM has for Apple's software is actually a renewal of a partnership the two companies had in the early nineties, when they jointly worked on "Pink," an object-oriented OS built to take on Windows. Apparently, it failed. With a name like "Pink," you only get three guesses as to why.

On a broader scale though, I'm hopeful for more business and corporate support for our favorite fruity computers, as it would be great for more people to be able to chose a productive computer in the workplace.

[via MacNN]