Thursday, November 4, 2010

Family Tree Maker for Mac software restrictions and discounts

The press release for the Family Tree Maker for Mac software arrived this morning - you can read it on many genea-blogs - e.g., here.  The price is $69.95 retail from the Ancestry Store here. 

There is more information, and comments from users about features and problems for FTM for Mac, on the Ancestry.com blog post Family Tree Maker for Mac is Here! 

Apparently, this version of Family Tree Maker for Mac is similar to Family Tree Maker 2010 for Windows, so Family Tree Maker 2011 has more features than the FTM for Mac just released.

There are also some hardware and software restrictions - the computer must be an Intel-based Mac running OSX 10.5 or later.  If you have a Mac without these features, you should check with Ancestry.com before buying Family Tree Maker for Mac.

Why is the price for FTM for Mac so high, relative to FTM 2011 for Windows (retail $39.95)?  Probably because the market is relatively small compared to the Windows market, and the major competitor, Reunion 9 by Leister Productions, sells retail for $99 here.  It will be interesting to see if a price war occurs in the Mac market for genealogy software.

I went shopping to see what might be found at a discount.  Amazon offers Family Tree Maker for Mac for $99.99, which includes a 6-month subscription to Ancestry.com (probably the U.S. Deluxe).  That is a pretty good deal - a retail 6-month subscription would be almost that much by itself (two three-month subscriptions is $101.70 retail).  If you already have an Ancestry subscription, you can probably add on the 6 months with a call to Ancestry.com.
 
For Windows users, http://www.nothingbutsoftware.com/ offers Family Tree Maker 2010 Deluxe (3-month U.S. Deluxe Ancestry.com subscription) for $54.95.  A good deal if you want the software and an Ancestry subscription. 
 
Presently, Amazon.com also offers Family Tree Maker 2011 Essentials (for Windows) for $32.99 (1-month Ancestry.com), FTM 2011 Deluxe for $59.99 (3-months Ancestry.com) and FTM 2011 Platinum for $75.99 (no Ancestry.com subscription, extra copy of FTM 2011 for a friend).

1 comment:

Tamura Jones said...

Apparently, most American genealogists are asleep at six in their local morning, so first to post a news article this afteroon; Family Tree Maker for Mac is back.

I have since added links to the Ancestry.com blog and their press release.
The new article corrects misleading information from Ancestry.com and addresses many of the obvious questions and issues that users are likely to have right now.

I hope that Ancestry.com will improve compatibility through Service Packs for both the Mac and Windows products, and will move towards simultaneous release for both platforms in the future. Basic issues like the high price, limited features and poor compatibility of this version do not make it very attractive.
I've called upon Ancestry.com to offer a trial edition so users don't have to buy this product blindly.

- Tamura