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  • Notes 9.0.1 64 bit for Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan now available - warning our customers NOT to update for 30+ days!

    Karsten Lehmann  29 September 2015 10:30:06
    One day before the general availability of Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan), IBM released an update for their IBM Notes Client 9.0.1 with 64 bit support:
    http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?subtype=ca&infotype=an&appname=iSource&supplier=877&letternum=ENUSZP15-0483

    Previous versions were using Java 1.6 32 Bit under the hood, which was maintained by Apple for the last 7 years. Since Apple dropped support for Java 1.6 in OS X 10.11, IBM had to update their IBM Mac Notes Client to work with newer JVMs (1.7 and 1.8 are maintained by Oracle and are only available with 64 Bit).

    Unfortunately we now have to warn our customers not to update their OS X version and Notes environment for at least 30 days.


    The reason is that IBM will release the C API toolkit 30 days after the Notes Client availability, as mentioned in this Q&A page:

    NOTE: If you are running applications that make use of the Notes C API Toolkit, then you must recompile those application with the new 64-bit Mac API Toolkit, which is expected to be available approximately 30 days after Notes 9.0.1 64-bit ships. This technote will be updated when the C API Toolkit is available.


    Since the applications that we maintain on OS X for customers (such as MindPlan or individual Notes Client add ons) contain native code, they need to be recompiled for 64 Bit, otherwise they will no longer work after the OS X update.

    We are asking IBM dev for a beta version of the C API toolkit to speed up this application update process, but have not received a positive response yet.


    BTW: It looks like there are no plans to move the Windows Notes Client to 64 bit. However, for Notes 9.0.2 it is planned to ship it with IBM's JVM version 1.8. IBM will announce their release plan for 9.0.2 in January at IBM Connect.

    Update:
    Looks like there is Java 6 support in El Capitan and the old 32 bit Notes Client is still working. See the comments for details.