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FileMaker 11 Lion Web/Tech

OSX Lion + FileMaker, Not Yet

Don’t upgrade to OS X Lion until FileMaker Inc. releases a compatibility update to FileMaker 11.

FileMaker Pro 11 is the only version that FileMaker Inc. plans to certify for Lion. If you are using an earlier version of FileMaker (prior to 11), don’t upgrade to Lion unless you see enough evidence out in the world or with your own safe experiments to determine that your FileMaker database(s) will run OK in that version of FileMaker under Lion. If you do run into a problem, you’ll be on your own.

Here is the word directly from one of FileMaker Inc.’s support pages:

FileMaker is excited about the powerful features in OS X Lion and iOS 5. We are committed to be compatible with the latest Apple operating systems and the shipping versions of FileMaker products will be updated to support OS X Lion and iOS 5.

Since FileMaker 8 is a PowerPC app, it will not run under OS X Lion at all due to the lack of support in Lion for Rosetta. FileMaker 8 and any earlier versions of FileMaker will not run under Lion.

FileMaker Pro 8 Get Info

Speculation:

There’s a pretty good chance that FileMaker 8.5 – 10 will work using FileMaker files on their own or as guests (with some minor bugs). There’s less of a chance that you could have a machine running Lion hosting filemaker files or older versions of FileMaker Server hosting files from a Lion machine. This is how it went with Snow Leopard anyway.

People will certainly try things with Lion and experiment if they have an irresistible Lion feature they want to use. Keep an eye out for findings. I will post what I find to this blog.

8 replies on “OSX Lion + FileMaker, Not Yet”

Thanks for pointing that out…
Some of us like beta’s I know some times we pay for it!
Good news seems Filemaker 11 Adv. runs quite well on the last Lion release.
without of course taking advantage of any of the new features.
(Filemaker Help search seems a little challenged excuse the expression) maybe its because my computer is getting to slow 3 years well that’s kind of old I suppose!

Great blog, helpful article – thanks.
Now I just went through a pretty long list of developers and apps to ensure that I can upgrade to Lion – something I have been looking forward to for a long time.
But as bizarre as it has to sound: Practically everything (even several obscure audio and image editing products I’m using) will work under Lion according to devs and users – with the exception of (sorry) effin’ FileMaker (which I use more than any other application) due to some unpleasant issues described here: http://help.filemaker.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/9901 .
I use custom date formats a lot, and I need to rely on the Inspector, so upgrading to Lion as long as these issues aren’t fixed is out of the question.
So when will an update be available? In a few hours, or days? Nope: “August”. That’s up to six weeks depending on how quickly they bother fixing these issues.
Now I would understand this if FileMaker, Inc. were a desperate little company at the end of the world. But these people practically stand around the same water cooler as Apple, Inc. They should have access to all relevant ressources, 24/7 – and still aren’t able to fix problems that must have been known for weeks, when the GM was released.
I find this hard to stomach. The creators of the world’s most popular cross-platform DBMS – a wholly owned subsidiary of Apple Inc. – do not have a compatible version of their most current products when the mothership releases a new version of an operating system that was announced in October, 2010.
Sorry, I call this amateurish.

Have to agree.
I figured out months ago how to run apple scripts through scripts devised in Filemaker. Despite the options available in the confusing dialogue for the script step Send Event I eventually discovered, after much digging around on the net, that in fact the only option that would work was to build the script action in the version of Apple Script Editor available in Tiger. Luckily I still have a boot disc of Tiger so I was able to compile the script as a .app application using Script Editor 2.1.1. The thing is, is that the script is Power PC so wont run under Lion as there is no rosetta emulator to run it.
My script is used to resize Safari windows during certain administrative tasks whereby my file maker record window is resized to fill the bottom of the screen and the script sets the browser window to fill the top half. This is done to facilitate the reading of data of webpage to be filled into my database records.
The Lion hiatus is a small thing; I can revert to resizing the windows by hand (not such a big deal) but this kind of thing is indicative of where Apple is going these days. File Maker being an arm of Apple makes this a pertinent point of criticism. File Maker have been consistently late with every new release of OS X. It’s a type of casualness that makes the mind boggle but I suspect it is part of the Apple philosophy of dumb it down and they will come…..leaving those of us who have serious work to do to wonder should we really be using Windows.

actually while the installers don’t run, if you migrate over a 10.6 install that already has 8.5 installed it runs no problem.. go figure

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