FAMILY TREE MAKER to be discontinued!

[Flattybasher9]

Blimey ?? that's not what I typed. Never mind.
The over-reactors have gone and done it. This will surely change the decision by Mr Kendall Hulet.

http://www.rootschat.com/links/01gn2/

5000+ complainers, only 531 petition signatories. Perhaps, by moaning on the blog, they have already vented their steam.

Regards

Malky.

[StevieSteve]

And to add some context, in 2012 Ancestry claimed 2m paying subscribers, which another blog estimated would equate to about 1.8m active users

[modem]

I still use FTM 2007 and do not have my tree on Ancestry. However, because that version is no longer linked to the Ancestry database, a function I found very useful, have been considering up grading to get that functionality back. Am glad now that I dithered because I did not really like the latest versions. Although I could carry on using FTM 2007 as a stand alone am worried about the lack of software support.

[Finley 1]

They are playing with my tired brain... (just mine  of course NO ONE elses)

I had to give up on PAF  and have been busy attempting to sort FTM out as I was given a copy by my cousin....

Now its not worth using that one... I shall just type out hard copies... until the panic goes away and someone can advise the best route. 
getting too tired to keep up with all the changes, .... next week we have the swop over to deal with and goodness knows what else..

Time to go back to knitting as a hobby, do you still use wool and two pins   

xin

[Beeonthebay]

I've been reading that blog on and off all day (now over 6000 posts) and what I don't get is why Ancestry are still selling this programme if they aren't going to support it, that is pretty poor customer service if not downright dishonest.

A few people have only just bought FTM over the past few days/weeks and they are not happy chappies, understandably so. 

[groom]

Wonder how many have it on their Christmas list?

[Guy Etchells]

There are two parts to this one is cloud storage which is never a good thing for secure archival of records, cloud storage is ok as an additional back up but never a good idea for a master file.

The second is an efficient family history program.
I have never rated FTM as any more than a run of the mill program aimed at the American market.
Many versions of FTM have slowed to a crawl when used to store a high number images linked to records.
There have been far more efficient databases available such as Brothers Keeper an excellent program which can be easily linked to word processors for additional text files and graphics programs such as Photoshop for graphics handling.

It also allows text files and graphic files to be stored wherever on wants them to be stored, which is excellent if one wants to share files with others.

Cheers
Guy

[Beeonthebay]

I did wonder at one time if Ancestry throws so many hits at you when you do a search then when you narrow it down like exact name and place of birth it gives you ZERO results whether it was some "method" of keeping your monthly payment subscription for longer as it takes more time to sift and search thereby wasting time on records that have no relevance to your search.........is this another way of making you a life time subscriber rather than somebody who can dip in for a month's subs at home here and there (or go to the local library) ......like they are trying to force everybody's hand into uploading their whole family tree and LOTS of time and money and effort onto THEIR site.  Is this how the "shaky leaves" thing works?  I've never really understood that.  Does it come from the indexed transcribed records or from other member's trees?

[mike175]

I'm not sure why anybody would be surprised 

The trend for some time now has been to move away from selling software on disk or download, for a one-off payment, toward a system of licensing which gives you access to a 'cloud-based' system for a monthly fee. So, instead of paying say £100 for the software, you can use it for £10 per month . . . as long as you keep paying. There were rumours that this was going to be the future for Windows itself, but I haven't kept up with the news on that.

Doesn't take a mathematician to work out who gains from this arrangement . . .

Meanwhile, I really like RootsMagic (UK edition) after trying just about all the others.

Mike.