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I have been using FM since Version 2.1. The issue with Leopard is just another in a long string of aggravations. For the life of me, I cannot understand how they dropped the ball on this one. They JUST released an update. Apple didn't trust FM (its subsidiary) to get a final copy of Leopard in time to address this problem? Amazing!!!

I work with the education sector. The hard line stance of FM towards their total lack of support for earlier versions with Leopard leaves me questioning my judgement to use them in the future. Maybe now is the time to consider migrating to SQL (since I have worked hard to learn PHP to enjoy with my Leopard powered FM 9 Server.....ooops......nevermind).

FMP is a great product...it has SO much potential, but it is very obvious after this, that it is the bastard child of Apple. This is evidenced by is its UI that apparently is never going to be updated to the 90's, let alone the 21st century. Maybe this is the proverbial writing on the wall that Apple is washing its hands of it in search of a new "ifile" or idata" or "ifart"

Only time will tell I guess

Greg

MusicTime's 1st paragraph - I couldn't agree more. How the fmping hell could they not have known? Similarly is there no ADC member who is not also a FMP9 user who hadn't discovered this with the beta??
I had installed Leopard and had just finished enabling PHP5 when Matt's email came through. Just as well it was only my test server. Oh well, back to 10.4.10!

John NZ

Not to let the developers at FMI off the hook (especially since they work for a subsidiary of Apple), but Leopard has some major changes under the hood that have required many app developers to rev their apps to make them compatible. App developers need to balance between developing and testing their own code for new versions and testing for compatibilty of older versions with a new OS. It would not surprise me if FM was not even testable on Leopard until recently. It would not make sense for them to spend a lot of time and resources testing on older versions if the current version does not work. Also, sometimes an old code base is impossible to update for a new OS because it would be to difficult to build with the new tools required.

So it is disappointing, although not surprising that FM 9 products will need and update for Leopard, but to expect FMI to release patches to older versions to run on a new OS is just unrealistic given the low level changes they may need to make.

Leopard will be awesome by the time it gets to 10.5.2. :)

Hi...

I have just upgraded my MacBook Pro 17 inch to Leopard. And I can use FileMaker Pro Advanced 9 - appearantly without any problems. Granted - I haven't used it for days but lets see.

And also FileMaker Pro 6 seems to work.

I'm not a Mac user (although recent I have thought about getting a Mac for developing) but to me the issues aren't critical and wouldn't stop me getting a Mac still.

Anyone serious about web publishing should be doing it with PHP and so this isn't a critical problem in my eyes. The other problem is just something you need to change in the preferences - so no biggy.

If the issue has been more serious I would definitely of been worried. I do however feel Filemaker should of been all over this from the beginning but I am confident by the 19th all will be well.

I just installed Leopard on two test systems and after Matt's mail came I checked out how my FMP databases behave. Well "oil and water" is a weak comparison! As soon as I tried to open an existing file or create a new file, FMP 8.5 advanced quits in a crash! This means that it is a completely useless application under Leopard on G4 systems! For he moment I will have to warn my customers not to upgrade to 10.5 and I hope that FM will think over their position of patches concerning pre 9 versions. After all 8.5 was released just over a year ago - no more support for a major bug after a year makes me think over my opinion about FMP. It is not easy to explain to a manager of a small company that: "... if you want the nice new features of Leopard on your 4 Mac computers you will have to spend another $ 716.- to keep your business running!..." I think this will also be my last job as a consultant and developper for that company!
Let's hope for the best - unfortunately not all companies can afford to buy new computers AND new software every year !

I understand some level of frustration, but I just don't get all the hand wringing over this. I did not see all the protests when FMI posted the notification that 8.5 was not compatible with windows VISTA... and the compatibility problems were much more serious than the OS X issues.

True, not many were all that anxious to upgrade to VISTA, but all the same there were plenty of inconveniences from the long delay in VISTA functionality.

Why would anyone unilaterally upgrade to Leopard without checking compatibility with pre-existing apps? The OS and applications will continue to evolve likely along separate paths. If anyone makes the decision to blindly race ahead with upgrades or stick with older versions of an app just to save a few dollars... may have to live with consequences either way.

While FMI certainly could have made the upgrade path smoother and handled communications better, I'm not ready to condemn their actions (or lack thereof) in the face of all the issues that must be addressed in keeping all the moving parts working together.

Major players in Mac OS applications have prepared their applications with much less internal knowledge of Leopard than it is supposed of Filemaker (v.gr., Adobe CS3 applications). The only outstanding companies are Microsoft and... an Apple owned company, Filemaker. I think there is no excuse for this. Certainly, Filemaker is bending toward a Microsoft takeover and, apparently, favoring a less than optimal experience to upgrade to Leopard for those depending on Filemaker.

I think that if the past is not enough, this could open Steve Jobs eyes to change Filemaker Management (programers and support staff do not decide on Filemaker) and call everybody to their sense. Perhaps now or never.

Just upgraded to Leopard but as I'm in Australia FMpv9 crashes on launch. My v-e-r-y old Microsoft Office works fine with no Leopard patch necessary. Most of my other high use programs, Freeway, Parallels have already patched....but FileMaker?....no! I now develop in FMp9 running in Parallels under MacOS 10.5. Oh...I believe IWP is broken too.

A client wanting to buy a slew of new Macs in the next week or so (end of lease) will now go Windows as his business would simply stop with FileMaker not running. We now see FileMaker's tardiness affecting Apple sales and fostering Windows adoption!

Peter Newland
FileMaker Business Alliance

You KNOW that I had to post this, right?

If you are using FileMaker (or any 4GL...) for larger applications, then you must check us out. Look here for our recent press release about Servoy and Leopard.

http://www.servoy.com/generic.jsp?mt=397&taxonomy_id=774

Thanks for letting me add my 2 cents.

Brenda Duncan
Servoy, Inc.

@smurray

"when FMI posted the notification that 8.5 was not compatible with windows VISTA"
1) Microsoft only releases windows updates once every 3-5 years.
2) These "updates" normally contain extremely large rewrites of the underlying software
3) Vista doesn't happily run on what used to be XP PC's anyway and network admin are also usually quite slow to adopt the new MS operating system - there tends to be a 1-2 year lag before assimilation.
4) Vista is more expensive, a company upgrading all their clients from XP to Vista can likely afford the cost of an FM upgrade
5) The Vista jump was from 32 to 64 bit. A lot of companies expected to have to upgrade their software.
6) Microsoft is not the parent company of FileMaker
7) FM 9 was released July 07 with a Leopard release date of November07. where as FM 8.5 was released in July06 with a windows release of late march 07 the following year. The fact that 8 wasn't being patched by that stage wasn't really as big of an issue.