Someone convince me

[Rick Whitelaw]

Hi,

Sorry if this seems lame, but someone convince me to upgrade from FMPA11 to FMPA12. I develop only for myself and my company. I read the posts and I see what seems to be an equal number of reasons to upgrade or not. So . . . now, wait a bit, don't bother?

RW

[jbante]

If you and your company are committed to the FileMaker platform, know that support for version 11 will eventually end. If you're sticking with FileMaker in the long term, you'll have to upgrade at some point. In general, upgrades are less painful if you don't skip versions. Just ask the folks upgrading from 6 to 12. However, many people choose not to upgrade until FileMaker publishes a "v2" release so they can be sure they have more robust software. Even if you hold off on deployment for production systems, it's worth developing new functionality in 12 so that you're more familiar with the new features when you are ready to deploy.

[mr_vodka]

I second Jeremy's post. In the past, unlike some upgrades in the past where you could settle with being a version of two behind ( i.e. 8 --> 8.5 ), with FMP12 new features and file format change, I would suggest taking a look into upgrading. There are numerous features that you can take advantage of including the new user interface tools, container fields, and ExecuteSQL.

[RodSierra]

Jumping on too early with FM is not a good idea. They have a history of spoon feeding enhancements and even bug fixes, forcing you to purchase new versions. With this platform change there are very good reasons to hold back on jumping in at this point. Although some of the fixes may be handled thru free version updates, I'm guessing that it will be somewhere at the second or third version release on this new platform until it is at a state where it will justify upgrading from an already stable version of the old platform. If you have a stable version running in FM11, why rush out and spend good money to have what you've already got? We look at every version of new FM features from the standpoint of our customers and their users and ask the question is it worth asking them to upgrade if we make changes that require them to purchase new software. In the case of FM10 to FM11, there were major changes to the developer interface that definitely made upgrade for development justified. However as to the user features, we elected not to include any of these in our updates, as they would have been mostly transparent to the end user, and thus not worth the price to them to purchase beyond FM10.

With the release of FM12, after seeing the performance issues posted and confirmed within less than 24 hours of release it was quite obvious to us that it was wasted time to do anything with FM12 until these are fixed.

You can also pretty much bet that FM will not quit selling FM11 until these issues are fixed.

Patience is a virtue, especially when dealing with FM.

[LaRetta]

I do not think any business should move their solution to 12 with the first release and I am not recommending upgrade (yet) to clients with existing solutions. But I am very excited about this major step forward by FileMaker. No, it didn't include many things I/we wanted but it finally at least gives us good-looking controls (no more radio buttons that look like they were created in the 70's) and it is much faster (or certainly will be after the first updater).

Two items I'm especially excited about are ExecuteSQL() which will change the way we use relationships and gather data, and improvements to FMGo, including releasing it for free. This means essentially that a business could spend as little as $300 to purchase FileMaker, load their sales force (up to 5?) with iPads or iPhone and FMGo and provide their own program (they write or we write for them) without the need of FMPro on every box. Of course this is minimum but sometimes a business needs to start out at minimum and prove that a program is beneficial before management buys into an additional investment.

12 then opens more doors and FMGo moves us into the mobile field (and works quite well, by the way) which is critical for success (in my opinion). It is the ability to access business information (and input business information) from multiple platforms and all locations which is key. FM can now go on Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad and Android and ...

We as Developers need to step forward and learn/test 12 so it can be improved and any issues resolved but I do not expect the loyalty to extend to the customer base quite yet except if new solutions. And even then, we would begin building but never serve until after first updater unless they were pioneer spirits up for the challenge (and some are).