FileMaker History

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FileMaker has been around since the mid 1980s, following closely on the heels of the first Mac released by Apple, the original 128K model.

Since then FileMaker has had Plus, II and eventually Pro suffixes to identify the product and is now the most popular cross-platform database available, with 80% of its sales now going to PC users running Microsoft Windows.

The latest version - FileMaker Pro 8.5 - was released in July of this year, which builds upon the features introduced with version 8, including the ability to store a whopping 8 terabytes of information and now allows direct integration with web data.

The most common mistake newcomers make when assessing FileMaker is to underestimate its power and flexibility. This usually comes about as a result of seeing how quick and easy it is to create a very useful database without looking further at the powerful functions and scripting language waiting to be taken advantage of. Simplicity and power in a single package!

For the record, we've pieced together some history tracking the significant upgrades in the following pages.