Howdy,
As the title suggests, please do your best to convince me to part with my time and money as I am 15 days in to my 30 day trial :)
I have been using FileMaker since version 1, way back in the day, although not developing intensively until about 2 years ago. There are many features that I enjoy about the product, but there are also limitations that will not be addressed anytime in the near future. Hence the search for "something better" (one is ALWAYS on the lookout for "something better" :)).
Ironically, I came across A5 via the FileMaker dev forum; had never heard of it before. And I have been doing "this sort of thing" for a while, being a "proud purchaser" of the very first version of Delphi from Borland back in '95. This of course has had me look at their latest offering, Delphi XE2. Others have also caught my attention; in no particular order: Wakanda, Real Software/Real Studio, WaveMaker, 4D and Omnis Studio (with which I created my very first commercial database back in '87 when it was Omnis 3 Plus). So all this means that I have been looking around "for a while", but you may have noticed that I have avoided any of Microsoft's offerings (Access, VB, VS, C#, etc.). It's real easy for me: I just do not care for them :)
Back to the question then. As mentioned, I have installed the v11 trial and have been investigating that for the past 2 weeks. Looking good so far. Checked out some of the video tutorials too; most are very well done and informative. But one of the main points that caught my eye when initially visiting the Alpha site/shop was the pricing! Gee, this looks really good! So I did what I normally do when checking out any new tool and that is scour the forums to see what others have to say.
This is when the flags started popping up. The biggest one for me is this "new" subscription model. Hmmm. Well, that may be workable. Then there is the feature set that was supposed to ship with the latest build but now somehow seems to be listed as only available in the subscription (I may be totally off base here, but that is how it appears from some of the posts and also the "squeeze-page"-like emails that I have been receiving since signing up for the trial).
Which brings me to my last point of this post: the company itself. While it's "cool and all" to have direct contact in the forum with the 2 principals of the company, it is also a bit disconcerting in a way. Seems as though it's two brothers, who have just recently taken on an outside investor, and some developers and support staff. Please note that this is in no way a disrespect to any involved, it just appears, from a completely new "outsider" to be a bit, well, can't say for sure :) Yes, I know they have been around since back in the DOS days, but so have I and I have never heard of them until two weeks ago (I know that doesn't mean much to you, but it does to me :)) FileMaker, on the other hand, is a total and complete subsidiary of, quite literally for the last month or so, the world's largest corporation. That goes a long way in "cred" when selling your solution, especially to larger corporate entities. It also has it's down sides as changes are slow in coming, and they tend to go towards the lowest common denominator (read: largest market share ... which is NOT the developer community :) ).
So if you wouldn't mind, please convince me to part with my cash for the subscription :) I really do like what I have seen so far with the product and feel that it would fit well with the type of work that I am involved with. On the other hand, the price is pretty close to the latest Delphi XE2 Enterprise, which lets me build true Windows EXEs, Mac OS X APPS and iOS APPS (via xCode) from the same code base.
Cheers!
Lyle
As the title suggests, please do your best to convince me to part with my time and money as I am 15 days in to my 30 day trial :)
I have been using FileMaker since version 1, way back in the day, although not developing intensively until about 2 years ago. There are many features that I enjoy about the product, but there are also limitations that will not be addressed anytime in the near future. Hence the search for "something better" (one is ALWAYS on the lookout for "something better" :)).
Ironically, I came across A5 via the FileMaker dev forum; had never heard of it before. And I have been doing "this sort of thing" for a while, being a "proud purchaser" of the very first version of Delphi from Borland back in '95. This of course has had me look at their latest offering, Delphi XE2. Others have also caught my attention; in no particular order: Wakanda, Real Software/Real Studio, WaveMaker, 4D and Omnis Studio (with which I created my very first commercial database back in '87 when it was Omnis 3 Plus). So all this means that I have been looking around "for a while", but you may have noticed that I have avoided any of Microsoft's offerings (Access, VB, VS, C#, etc.). It's real easy for me: I just do not care for them :)
Back to the question then. As mentioned, I have installed the v11 trial and have been investigating that for the past 2 weeks. Looking good so far. Checked out some of the video tutorials too; most are very well done and informative. But one of the main points that caught my eye when initially visiting the Alpha site/shop was the pricing! Gee, this looks really good! So I did what I normally do when checking out any new tool and that is scour the forums to see what others have to say.
This is when the flags started popping up. The biggest one for me is this "new" subscription model. Hmmm. Well, that may be workable. Then there is the feature set that was supposed to ship with the latest build but now somehow seems to be listed as only available in the subscription (I may be totally off base here, but that is how it appears from some of the posts and also the "squeeze-page"-like emails that I have been receiving since signing up for the trial).
Which brings me to my last point of this post: the company itself. While it's "cool and all" to have direct contact in the forum with the 2 principals of the company, it is also a bit disconcerting in a way. Seems as though it's two brothers, who have just recently taken on an outside investor, and some developers and support staff. Please note that this is in no way a disrespect to any involved, it just appears, from a completely new "outsider" to be a bit, well, can't say for sure :) Yes, I know they have been around since back in the DOS days, but so have I and I have never heard of them until two weeks ago (I know that doesn't mean much to you, but it does to me :)) FileMaker, on the other hand, is a total and complete subsidiary of, quite literally for the last month or so, the world's largest corporation. That goes a long way in "cred" when selling your solution, especially to larger corporate entities. It also has it's down sides as changes are slow in coming, and they tend to go towards the lowest common denominator (read: largest market share ... which is NOT the developer community :) ).
So if you wouldn't mind, please convince me to part with my cash for the subscription :) I really do like what I have seen so far with the product and feel that it would fit well with the type of work that I am involved with. On the other hand, the price is pretty close to the latest Delphi XE2 Enterprise, which lets me build true Windows EXEs, Mac OS X APPS and iOS APPS (via xCode) from the same code base.
Cheers!
Lyle
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