Claris started the 19.3.1 release and the first product showing up is #ClarisFileMaker Cloud 2.19.3.1.
See announcement
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bad timing - they just got some "bad press" here: FileMaker und native Unterstützung für Macs mit Apple-Chip: Still ruht die See | MacGadget
(since they slimmed down their DACH branch I would be surprised if they respond - Germany not completely low profile FM market?)
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Well, I highly dislike the reporting.
Especially speculation about APIs. FileMaker uses Cocoa since version 8.5.
But Apple Silicon seems to not be a priority for them as they spend more work on other things for 19.0, 19.1 and 19.2.
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maybe "they" change their mind in the nearest future and report accordingly ..
Thanks to Chrome I was able to read the article in English !
Claris never discloses what they are working on. The fact that there is not yet an M1 native version looks bad, and appearances are what drives other's opinions, especially in a very competitive world like software.
My guess is that porting an application to run natively on M1 may require a lot of hours, has Claris enough resources to complete such a project in a short time, I don't know. Add to that that a new MacOS version is coming up, gulp.
Only a few people knows about that M1 native version, and they can't talk. So all that remains to mere mortals are speculations, and that doesn't prove useful. We will have to wait.
The migration to a new CPU coupled tp yearly release of new versions is giving a hard time to developers for the Mac platform.
That is simply not accurate.
Well not publicly. They told that they will release a native M1 version sometimes in the future. That is a project quite special.
Regarding functionalities, what is known about what's coming ? Even the last two roadmap presentations were not informative about that as previously.
I have seen in the past FMI/Claris that they never promise that functionality X will be released at date XYZ. Even during roadmap presentation when they talked about upcoming things, they stated that they could be included or not in the next release.
What am I missing ?
Many thanks
What would make working on v19.x and a M1-native version conflicting targets?
That is also not accurate.
They publicly announced:
- working on bringing FileMaker solutions to Android and collaborating with Livecode to achieve this
- working on making both FMP & FMS available on M1
- working on removing Internet Explorer 11 and replacing it with Edge on MS Windows
- working on improvements to the quickstart experience
- working on bringing FMS to Ubuntu
Anything that is announced is never done so in the form of a promise. As far as I am concerned, they could pull out of Android as long as they have not introduced it. Now, does that mean we are not going to get M1? Does that mean we will be stuck with IE? I don't think so, it just means we don't have a date, and we have to wait. Even if we had the date, we would still have to wait. Even if they gave a date, they could manage to ship on a different date, earlier or later.
So taking the liberty of rephrasing your statement, yes, Claris discloses what they are working on, and yes they do so publicly. Does that give you access to the whole roadmap, with a backlog and priorities and dates for each? No. I am not an ETS member, but if you feel like you are not getting enough, I can only suggest that you enlist to it by emailing ets@claris.com (my understanding is that access to ETS does not require Claris Partner membership or any such thing), just keep in mind that ETS is not meant as an early notification system, it is meant for testing and providing feedback to the manufacturer. If what you are looking for is "What will be in the next release" instead of "What is Claris working on", then I think contributing to the ETS is your best chance at putting some of those puzzle pieces together to get a picture that could look like a next release.
Let's not pretend we are still in 2015 when FileMaker Inc. was not as open as it is today about its roadmap and its other initiatives. If speculations are not useful, I can just as equally say that the statements that I quoted for their inaccuracy are harmful.
Do you guys really think plugin vendors would all prepare for Apple M1 and Ubuntu, if the release is not coming soon?
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While I agree that they publicly announce some areas they're working on, I would still argue that most of them are not features of what's to come.
M1 native compatibility, IE11 replacement and Ubuntu support are all compatibility issues that are pretty much expected from the platform at this time (IMHO). I would personally include Android in this group too but I can see why someone else wouldn't agree with me.
With that said I personally don't think that announcing something that is "to be expected" (e.g. support for Monterey when it'll come out) should be treated as communicating what they are working on: it's the natural life cycle of a software to adapt to new hardware, software and technologies.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad Claris is telling us they're actively working toward those goals, but it's (mostly) not what I'm interested in as a developer.
What I would like to know is what are their priorities, what features they want to introduce or further develop, what they want to ignore, drop or replace and possibly a timeframe (something along the lines of "in the next two releases" or "in the next year").
In this regard your example of the quickstart experience is what I want from them: clearly telling us that a particular feature is being improved and worked on, even without a promised date of release.
To some extent we can see which areas are of most interest to Claris as of today but it's more of an educated guess than an actual information provided to us (and it requires some degree of involvement in the community and some reading between the lines).
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The QuickStart experience is there to stay.
In 19.2 you have a preview.
Next version will probably improve it.
In future, I expect this be implemented for FileMaker Server (Cloud and On-premise) to be able to create layouts, define fields and tables on the server. Maybe it will also get something to define scripts. As it is currently macOS only, it may go to Windows FMP, too.
If they eventually get to feature parity to the old layout editor, they may drop the old way.
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- When something gets deprecated, they usually let us know way ahead of time
- there are more examples than what I gave, the vision 2021 session where I took my examples was also showing Robert Holsey talking about their initiative to make the process of add-on creation easier. There are other elements that were pointed to also, like making FileMaker server setup easier and so on. Some of that is indeed more blurry (more like goals than features) as I suspect it stands further "on the assembly line" and the shape it will take can change.
- There are also some changes that do not take place in the product but must be drawing some resources (like improving the marketplace).
- I don't think they have ever mentioned support for a given OS as a feature (unless the platform is introduced to that OS as we saw with CentOS/Ubuntu), when asked about it, they give an approximate timeline. With Mac OS, I suspect they have access to the same beta releases as developers, no "insider perk" here.
- Let's also keep in mind things like M1 and Ubuntu are not going to happen every year. Yet they did impact the pipeline. They can't give us what they don't have: if they are not working on it, don't have anything to show, could get pulled from the roadmap, etc. there is little value in sharing it (there is such a thing as sharing too early). I personally would have preferred if they never had mentioned NextGen for all the confusion it generated, given how little they were able to share about it. Also, we have to acknowledge they are in a crowded space and some items shared too early, specially if they are busy on M1 / Ubuntu, could end up simply handing out their playbook to competitors who are not dealing with deployments involving workstations. Yet, I still think the desktop clients to be a great advantage of the platform and sincerely hope I will never hear Claris head towards droping those to favor only browser implementation that would let it "move faster".
- Don't get me wrong, I like to hear more about features too and was thrilled when they originally announced they were brining card windows to the WebDirect implementation of FMS19. That said, I think the vision 2021 webinar they did gave us way more than features and stretched out much further in the future than past webinars & roadmaps. I have a stong preference for this type of communication over a list of features that do not give me much about the overarching intent.
I'm starting to feel like sharing about the 19.3 ahead of official release got us into yet another side discussion that is not the most productive. If we have something specific to say about the 19.3 release, let's say it here once it is out. If you have comments / suggestions about how Claris communicates its roadmap and what are your expectations on this, I would like to suggest the best place for this is perhaps over here.
And new players keep coming in the game. My prediction is that not all of those new offers will survive. Claris has 30 years of experience on his side 
, but the game is changing.
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This linux server upgrade is great.
I'm so pleased that they've finally included the script scheduler. It was an absolute pain to setup and manage script schedules in Postman. It was a multi-step process that wasn't pretty. Getting the information back in JSON is not the same as seeing a simple list of the script names and a running/not running flag.
I'm also really pleased about the log viewer too. I'll post a bug-report on that because they've implemented USA-formatting for dates, which is a blind-spot for them I think.
Interesting to see that they are implementing the app-building capabilities in server. For everyone wanting to read the tea-leaves, that has to be the equivalent of a front-cover wrapper on the weekend newspaper.
Has anyone tested the drag-n-drop relationship builder?
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Good observation. There is more than one particular country’s metric system.