FileMaker Pro 7 arrived last week with significant changes to the popular database application. In this super-sized issue, William Porter reviews the new version and explains why it’s such a big deal. Then Joe Kissell revisits the FireWire data loss problem that has affected some people upgrading to Panther. Matt Neuburg covers the releases of DEVONthink 1.8.1, Affrus 1.0, StyleMaster 3.5, FaceSpan 4.0, and NoteTaker 1.8; we also spotlight a few of Adam’s recent radio interviews and note that the iTunes Music Store has hit 50 million downloads.
Apple Releases Mac OS X 10.3.3 -- Just as we were about to go to press, Apple released the latest free update to Mac OS X 10.3. Version 10.3.3 offers a long list of enhancements (see Apple's Knowledge Base article), but one we're pleased to see is the inclusion of network-mounted volumes in the list of volumes shown in the sidebar of Finder windows and Open/Save dialogs
The Devonian Age Continues -- Hard on the heels of last week's review of DEVONthink 1.8 comes version 1.8.1, offering the capability to index a document on disk without also importing it into the database; this meets my criticisms that the database is unnecessarily large and that deleting an original document to save disk space risks losing the data
iTunes Music Store Tops 50 Million Songs Sold -- Apple announced today that the iTunes Music Store had hit its 50 millionth song sale, and was averaging 2.5 million songs sold per week, about half in the form of albums
The New Face of FaceSpan -- After a long hiatus, FaceSpan has returned in a new version completely rewritten for Mac OS X. FaceSpan 4.0 is an application construction kit with AppleScript as the programming language: you "draw" your interface, you write AppleScript code in scripts attached to the interface items, you compile, and presto, you've got a stand-alone application
Perl Made Easy with Affrus 1.0 -- Late Night Software has a history of picking up where Apple leaves off. Mac OS X includes AppleScript, but Apple's own Script Editor isn't all that great as an editing environment, and it can't debug at all
Style Master 3.5 Works Web Site Wizardry -- Western Civilisation's Style Master has long been my favorite application for creating, editing, and previewing Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in Web pages (see "Precision Web Pages with Style Master" in TidBITS-501)
NoteTaker 1.8 Hits More High Notes -- AquaMinds has released version 1.8 of their flagship notebook/outliner program, NoteTaker (see "Take Note of NoteTaker" in TidBITS-677)
Adam's March Radio Shows -- I've done guest spots on a pair of radio shows recently, so if you'd like to hear my conversations regarding Wi-Fi security, the recent worm plague, our move to Web Crossing, Take Control, and what's happening in the Mac industry, listen to Gene Steinberg's Mac Night Owl show from 05-Mar-04 (you may need to load the show URL directly into QuickTime Player, and I'm in the second half), and Scott Sheppard's Inside Mac Radio show on 13-Mar-04 (again, I'm in the second half)
When Apple released Mac OS X 10.3 Panther last October, many people (though by no means all) had serious difficulties with their FireWire hard drives. Affected users found that, after restarting their computers under Panther with the drives connected, the drives become completely inaccessible - unable to mount on any operating system, and so badly damaged that even disk recovery applications could not retrieve their data.
Not long after the problem surfaced, Apple acknowledged an issue affecting FireWire 800 hard drives that use the Oxford 922 bridge chipset with firmware version 1.02 or earlier
I wouldn't describe the last several versions of FileMaker Pro as ho-hum, but I wouldn't exactly call them exciting. The addition of XML support in FileMaker Pro 6 was so revolutionary an enhancement that most developers still don't know what to make of it two years later
FileMaker Pro 7 Released -- Readers look at what the new database software offers, and how it differs from previous versions. (6 messages)
Front ends to SQL databases -- The discussions of what's new in FileMaker Pro 7 morphed into the question of whether or not there were graphical front-ends to powerful (but usually difficult) SQL databases