Betalogue

Great. FileMaker has just announced the new version of FileMaker Pro, and it sounds like it fixes some pretty major problems that I have reported on in this blog.

For example, I have written about the horrible bug that causes FileMaker Pro 7 to generate huge PDF files with hundreds of copies of the same fonts. The bug was never fixed in the subsequent FileMaker Pro 7 updates. Now FileMaker Pro 8 comes with a “new PDF Maker and Excel Maker” that will “simplify conversion to those file formats” (according to today’s edition of MacInTouch). It’s obviously marketing speak that probably implies that, in order to generate proper PDF files, you’ll have to upgrade to FileMaker Pro 8, because FileMaker Pro 7 will never be fixed.

I have also written about the lack of scroll wheel support in FileMaker Pro 7. FileMaker Pro 8 finally adds support for this — i.e. years after every other Mac OS X developer. But of course, you’ll have to pay for it.

Obviously, it’s been like this for years now… It’s nothing new. But it’s irritating just the same. I guess I can survive without the scroll wheel support (I have survived with it for years), but this PDF bug is huge (in more ways than one) — and the absence of a fix for FileMaker Pro 7 is simply unacceptable, no matter how little they care about their Mac-using customers.

This entry was posted by Pierre Igot on Monday, August 29th, 2005 at 5:11 pm and is filed under Macintosh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.