IBM Lotus Notes to support OS X, Devil turns up thermostat

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]