It’s been an interesting few days for my thinking about Notes on my beloved Mac platform.

On Friday I was in despair, having read in the release notes for the newest version of the private beta for Notes 8.0.1, the following worrying note:

“Notes on Macintosh OS X is expected to be available with Notes release 8.5.”

i.e. that we should not expect a Mac version of Notes 8 in the Notes 8.0.x timeframe.

There followed an interesting email discussion with Ed, where I outlined my feelings on this (that a great many people would be very disappointed with this news, that the Notes community has experienced a big swing to the Mac platform this year, and that I was sure that Lotus had committed to a Mac version of 8.0.1), and Ed explained the good business reasons why this had taken place.

So, the last thing I had expected is that we would be presented with a downloadable version of a public beta of Notes 8.5 for the Mac within the next 2 days.  Amazing!  And a great way for Lotus to completely change the way in which this news would be handled.

So, get your download engine started now!  Download Notes 8.5 Beta for the Mac here (well at least when the page starts responding again – I think that a LOT of folks are downloading this right now!).  The forum for the beta program is responding, and is available here.