Bad news for any current Filemaker users excited about the release of Leopard. Filemaker have announced on their website that they do “not recommend the use of Filemaker 9 products on computers running the Leopard OS”, I presume until they can test its running and issue any compatibility updates. In addition, earlier versions (I currently am a very happy business and personal user of version 8 ) are also not recommended until compatibility testing is complete.
This is not going to be a rant. On balance, any operating system needs to be tested and it is no mean feat to ensure that all previous code and functionality will swim easily in the new water. We decided to purchase new iMacs quite recently towards gradually moving all our machines to Macs (we are currently 2 out of 5 Macs to PCs). A hard drive failure and backup problem on one of the PCs prompted the earlier than Leopard release purchase. With this announcement I’m glad we did buy early. My surprise, with others in all this is that Filemaker isn’t ready. Filemaker as I understand it is an owned subsidiary of Apple! If others can have their software tested and ready for Leopard why not family members? I phoned customer services UK and they told me they were waiting to test Filemaker with the release of Leopard. Now, obviously Filemaker developers haven’t been waiting until now to get ready, they would have had the developer’s releases of Leopard all along and what they are waiting for is final confirmation of its compatibility. They will have known general problems up to now and hopefully talked to Apple engineers to begin resolving any problems and even getting excited about making Filemaker rock even more with new Leopard only features. So I find it very strange that they are not ready. Very strange.
I would expect that further announcements will be made as to which of the previous versions will be made compatible for Leopard. Anything less than a full preparation of versions 8, 8.5 and 9 would be damaging to customer relations. As a small financial sector business user of Filemaker v. 8 we store all our client personal and financial information on Filemaker, it has become our data hub, helps us see the entire business process and is invaluable to our business. We can’t follow the upgrade path to Leopard just yet because Filemaker have ran into some difficulties. Did somebody at Filemaker fall asleep? Maybe they are just being cautious but plenty of us just expect things to go smoothly and have been ordering Leopard updates and new computers with no thought of our main data hubs falling around our ears. An unfortunate lesson and I’m glad I got the news early.
October 24, 2007 at 2:49 pm |
lesson = don’t rely on Macs in a business environment? Home and personal use they are peerless.
yours
fish out of water
October 24, 2007 at 3:47 pm |
The opposite in fact. I’m moving the entire system to Macs because they are excellent in business, Filemaker is a superb database which works natively in PDF, Excel formats and has enhanced functionality when used on the Macs rather than the PCS… e.g. easy scripting to create a Keynote / powerpoint presentation of client information. All not possible easily on the PC for the same amount of money and knowledge.
All computers have their requirements for OS changes… I’ll just have to wait a little longer to upgrade our system, but upgrade I will and the system we will have will be the finest the office has had in 25 years.
fish swimming in warm water.
October 24, 2007 at 5:12 pm |
I think Apple have not given 3rd party developers much access to Leopard so this statement is probably a message of caution ? I suspect we will see a large number of developers issuing updates to their software in the next few weeks.
October 25, 2007 at 2:50 pm |
They’ve had Leopard betas since June and direct access to Leopard engineers. Everyone has had Gold Master for two weeks but other companies have got their stuff prepared already. Strange.
October 26, 2007 at 12:37 am |
Ah. Yeah. How embarrassing for you at FileMaker. For two years you’ve been in the know of what was coming down the OS X pike (probably more so than anyone, save Apple’s latest bed-babe, Adobe), and you are finding compatibility issues now, two weeks before a 6 month delayed release of Leopard?!
My, it seems we should have been spending a little more time on the programing floor instead of rushing around in Marketing trying to release every bell and whistle in sight. Releasing “new versions” every 8 months (and charging the moon for them) must have been too absorbing for your strategy team to find the time to consider code sustainability.
Well, now you can join the ranks of Quark: a company so arrogant and self-absorbed with their own market exclusivity to realize that they had painted themselves (and, worse, their installed base) into a corner.
That’s right – if FileMaker Pro is our mission app, we must now wait until FM is good and ready to bless our upgrade to Leopard. How long is this going to take, guys? How long?
Thankfully, I took the time to fully review FMP 9’s “new feature set” and found little reason to upgrade. FileMaker will probably want to charge it’s users for a Leopard-compatible version, and so at least I dodged one upgrade hollow-point. But it seems I’ll have to take a little time-released shrapnel in the legs before catching the next metal mushroom square in the chest.
How embarrassing.
October 29, 2007 at 2:16 am |
What a joke. Without any warning I updated to Leopard. Now. not one of my Filemaker solutions or 8.5 advanced works. What am I supposed to do as a developer??? Filemaker have advised on their website
“We have not tested earlier (pre-FileMaker 9) versions of FileMaker software on Mac OS X Leopard and do not intend to release updates for earlier versions”
What a totally despicable and ethically bad company is Filemaker these days.