OS X Lion is due shortly and FileMaker user’s need to know what to expect before upgrading. FileMaker 8 or lower will not run at all on Lion. Only FileMaker 11 will be certified and supported. A small upgrade to FileMaker 11 that will support Lion is in the works.
Here’s what FileMaker says about Lion as of July 8:
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.
Bottom line:
FileMaker 11 needs a minor update for Lion which is not yet available (as of July 16 2011).
FileMaker 8 will not run at all on Lion. It was developed as a PowerPC app. It is not a Universal App so requires Rosetta which is not supported in Lion. This means any version of FileMaker prior to version 8.5 will not run under Lion.
You need FileMaker 11 to run Lion. We may learn in the trenches that the bugs you will encounter running a lower version of FileMaker are tolerable, but we don’t know that yet and FileMaker Inc. does not have the resources to make sure that FileMaker 10 or less will run well on Lion.
I’ll update this post as more is revealed.
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