Scribbling

It has been roughly six months since I took the plunge to purchase iFamily for Tiger, a relative newcomer to genealogy software for Macs. I had reservations about the product at the outset triggered initially by the its name, iFamily for Tiger. With Apple already promising Leopard on the horizon I was concerned about the viability of the software especially if I chose not to become an early adopter of Apple’s newest operating system. My concerns led to an interesting and amusing chain of emails with the developer, Keith Wilson. As our exchanges progressed, I was convinced that my initial concerns were unfounded. Keith has not only produced an excellent product at an unbelievable price(upgrades are free!), he is exceptionally attuned to his user base and provides unparalleled service with obvious good will topped off with a welcome twist of wry humor! While there are a few features in iFamily that are only available to those who have upgraded to Leopard, they are completely transparent to those who continue to use Tiger. I plan to upgrade to Leopard when Apple resolves a few more issues that exist with the operating system so I was pleased that the improvements to iFamily were not exclusively for those who had made the switch to Leopard.

I had tested several genealogy programs for Mac: Reunion 9, MacFamilyTree 5, Heredis, Genealogy Pro, PAWriterX, and a few more whose names elude me at present before I finally demoed iFamily for Tiger. For starters, $100 was way too steep a price to shell out for Reunion 9–it just didn’t seem worth it to me despite its apparent dominance in its category for Mac software; and, I also found that its crippled demo was incredibly short-sighted considering the cost of the product. MacFamilyTree was better but the glowing reports regarding the software that I had encountered were for the old version, 4.5.  I visited the support forum of the latest version where the user comments and the company’s responses read like a script to a modern day soap opera or perhaps a mystery miniseries which revolved around the on-going, suspense-filled question: Will they ever get it right? To be frank, I liked iFamily from the start but it lacked a feature of being able to generate an HTML file, which could be published on a web site. That capability was already built into Reunion and MacFamilyTree and it seemed as if I would have to resort to other means to accomplish HTML generation with the data maintained in iFamily. As requests for this feature increased on iFamily’s support forum, Keith responded by implementing it in style–the resulting file looks so good that it is fun just to generate an HTML file and burn it to a CD or DVD for family members to view on their own computers, PC’s or Macs. iFamily has continued to mature with the addition of features and enhancements, which, in many cases, are a collaborative effort involving specific requests submitted by forum members and the developer. Equally as important as the maturation of the software is the restraint Keith has shown by not sacrificing quality for unnecessary bells and whistles and performance degrading bloat. iFamily for Tiger, Leopard, or Snow Leopard, this cat just purrs!

Tags: Mac genealogy software