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Notability and FileMaker Updated With Native Support for M1 Macs
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Now Bring on the M1X Machines. The New M1X Mac mini.
15 Watts Max power draw of GREEN GOODNESS
15 Watts Max power draw of GREEN GOODNESS
I honestly can't see how FileMaker is still in business, especially in 2021. I was at the conference when they thought PHP was revolutionary. (Which at the time, for FileMaker, it was... that's not to hate on PHP, as a programmer I made a lot of easy money from PHP).
The two developers I know that still have to support FileMaker absolutely hate it. Could go on with reasons, but I am just surprised they're still in business. 🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️
The two developers I know that still have to support FileMaker absolutely hate it. Could go on with reasons, but I am just surprised they're still in business. 🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️
I see it used in retail. Look up customers, schedule appointments, make payments. Looks pretty good.
We have used FileMaker for our customer database for nearly 30 years. I know of no other good relational database for the Mac that is not cloud-based.
Please enlighten me on why we shouldn't be using filemaker. Easy to use, super powerful, seamlessly integrates with filemaker go on iPads and iPhones. Filemaker essentially runs our entire company (estimating, accounting, inventory, project management, scheduling, photo database, sale kiosks. I can go on and on. It does absolutely everything we can think of. It's fast, never crashes, you don't need to be a programmer to develop it, it has onsite server software. It's really fantastic software.
I can understand people not caring about filemaker and moving on to next article but I just don't get the disdain for it where people feel compelled to throw out lies or mock the people that do use it. Maybe it's me who is ill informed. With that comment, clearly, you must know of multiple superior options I should be using. Do you mind sharing what software I should be using instead for the things I mentioned above, that you don't need to be a programmer to create, runs on our Macs, iOS devices and allows us to store all our data onsite? I am seriously interested.
Every time MacRumors runs a story on FileMaker, the haters and ignorant people trot out the same old malarkey somehow feeling they must comment.
to store data
I thought the same thing - but maybe you can download the iPad version of the app onto M1 mac's? Not the Mac version.
I used FMP for several years and whilst I could see its power and versatility I struggled with it immensely. I found its operating paradigm to be lost in a vast series of menu and sub menu options in a whole host of pop up property windows.
When I came back to edit my database, 3 years later, I was totally lost in finding and recoding elements of the design, so much so that I turned to MySQL and PHP and HTML.
Obviously the issue was my lack of FMP skills but I honestly believe that it was tricky software to navigate.
When I came back to edit my database, 3 years later, I was totally lost in finding and recoding elements of the design, so much so that I turned to MySQL and PHP and HTML.
Obviously the issue was my lack of FMP skills but I honestly believe that it was tricky software to navigate.
They have increased their license fees year on year and have now removed the ability to make standalone runtime solutions.
We (like many other people) found alternative products to make solutions for our customers.
They’ve priced a lot of people out of their product.
My dad is a big fan (well, was, well into the 2000s).
I think that's true, but I also think that's not accidental. They briefly tried the Bento thing, and must have ultimately found that this just isn't an economic model that works.
In enterprise, it's certainly viable to have a base platform like FileMaker and then charge for customizations on top. But for consume software, the amount of money people are willing to pay is extremely low compared to the cost of maintaining such a software prdocut.
I always wanted to check out FileMaker, as it is a classic, even though I do not need desktop databases a lot ( I have some applications using PostgreSQL in my local network). What always kept me from doing so was the subscription model.
Last year there was an article in the German IT magazine Ct about the database Ninox, which is created by a company from Germany (https://ninox.com/en) and positioned as an FileMaker alternative, but I am not sure how they compare feature wise.
As it was a one time purchase on the Mac (EUR 34,99) I bought it to check it out. But even in the last year I haven't had time to do so.
Last year there was an article in the German IT magazine Ct about the database Ninox, which is created by a company from Germany (https://ninox.com/en) and positioned as an FileMaker alternative, but I am not sure how they compare feature wise.
As it was a one time purchase on the Mac (EUR 34,99) I bought it to check it out. But even in the last year I haven't had time to do so.
Not sure Mr Angry will see it like that.
Or notice the perpetual and per seat licensing prices are ever more insane in order to make subs look reasonable.
I do appreciate FM and the ability to spin up a functional DB with scripting and calc possibilities way way faster than say SQL - when comparing speed to deploy from scratch.
But it’s the sharp business practices which are precisely the reason why I have to jump through hoops to get new clients into the platform as opposed to accepting how it’s obviously superior in just about every way.
I tried to use notability on the M1 MacBook Air a few days ago. Constant beach balling when switching from drawing to text. It would stop accepting keyboard input and start beeping at every attempted character entry. It was really frustrating to use it. Hopefully they fixed it with the update.
What's a good alternative to FMP for people who are not programmers? In the past I used 4D quite a bit, and dabbled with FMP, but am curious about more recent easy to use database products.
Actually, I have. Like 20-some years ago. Used it to store some research projects before there were good dedicated research managers. Then it became an Windows & enterprise product. Then they released a short-lived personal "lite" version for the Mac (can't remember what it was called), which I also used, but it was pretty limited, and was then unceremoniously discontinued before they added any significant features to it.
But since I hear about all sorts of other enterprise software like Quickbase, Tableau, Peoplesoft, etc., and virtually nothing about FileMaker (not even on Apple's own website), I figured it, and the rest of Claris, just faded away.
I am assuming I am Mr. Angry. I am not angry, just perplexed why people have to go out of their way to misguide people from maybe looking into some good software.
You mentioned yourself that its a great piece of software. Your beef with it now has changed from it being "subscription only" to them increasing the perpetual licensing price so that you are steered to go Subscription. Guess what, you're wrong again. Base Subscription is $19US/Month. Upgrade cost to a perpetual license is $197US. If you upgrade once a year, that works out to $16.41/Month but most people can get away skipping a year making it $8.20/Months.
Price is a subjective thing so I can't fault anyone for thinking its too high. If all you are doing is storing your recipes, I am sure there are better options. I would love for things to be cheaper (no matter what the price is) but considering that this software runs our entire company, I think $200 every couple of years is pretty reasonable. Look at the cost of Adobe products or Microsoft products that are essential to some businesses (we no longer use these due to subscription). Yearly upgrades to our CAD software have increased over the years to where its now over $1000/seat.
Again. I am completely against subscription software and If Claris ever makes it so that its subscription only, we will also be switching to something else and I will be by your side spreading the news. But at the moment, perpetual licenses do exist for software that is pretty good, therefor I find the bashing unwarranted. Again, not angry, just perplexed.
I guess FileMaker is probably still good for super high-end users, but Claris/FileMaker had a really loyal home/school audience with ClarisWorks and Bento, and frankly they just stabbed that entire group in the back.
Does anyone know if a Linux version of FileMaker Pro Advanced 19.3 is coming? I know the FM Server for Ubuntu is out, but I use FM for single user database solutions and would love to be able to do the whole thing in Linux. (Can't afford the right Mac hardware).
Heck yeah. It’s the #1 Workplace Innovation Platform in the world. I’ve made my career building custom apps in FileMaker. The development is fast and the apps it produces are powerful (as long as they’re built correctly). It has a powerful plugin architecture and a thriving add-on store, and its native support for web technologies (e.g. JavaScript, cURL, etc.) let you integrate it with pretty much anything. It also supports external SQL sources as shadow tables, plus OBDC and JDBC connections; and it has its own Data and Admin APIs so the communication can be bidirectional. Plus, the iOS/iPadOS app is totally free, as is accessing any FileMaker app via a web browser. And if that weren’t enough, it also has a robust and highly customizable security system that even integrates with your Open Directory, Active Directory, or AWS users and groups. Frankly, I don’t know why any business with fewer than about 2,000 employees wouldn’t use it, unless they’ve been soured by a lousy FileMaker-based app.
Honestly, I think that’s where most of the hate comes from: FileMaker Pro makes it extremely easy for citizen developers, with absolutely no understanding of database forms and methodologies, to create some pretty impressive (albeit basic) custom apps. The problem is that once a custom app is created, the business always wants it to do more, and more, and more, and… you get the point. Eventually, the app is trying to do so many things that its amateur backend gets severely bogged down, at which point they’ll hopefully call a professional developer like me. Unfortunately, most of the time this never happens, and since these amateur apps are usually never given their own name, everyone just calls them “FileMaker” (since that’s what it’s built in). It doesn’t take long for everyone to learn that “FileMaker” is a piece of crap—which is like saying that HTML5 is a piece of crap because I once visited an HTML5-based web site that didn’t work well.
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