FileMaker is far from cheap, much less free. Would the average Mac user decide to eschew the comfortable GUI ease of FileMaker for a more challenging Unix-based program? This being Low End Mac, I think most of our readers appreciate free software like MySQL or PostgreSQL. While FileMaker has a nice GUI and the open source databases are inherently command-line applications, there are some nice GUI clients that ease you into the world of SQL if you are new to it. Popular open source relational databases like MySQL and PostgreSQL can run happily in the background on your Mac. The move to the Unix-based OS X brought a lot of new database options to the Mac. There were very few options for running a relational database on your Mac.įileMaker gained relational capabilities with version 3.0 in 1995, but as many database purists have noted over the years, the ability to reference another database is not the same as having a truly relational, multi-table database.Īs of version 8, FileMaker ships a truly relational database with the ability to create multiple tables in one database, but not everyone can shell out close to $300 for a copy – or will want to when there are free alternatives. Based on technology that Apple acquired from Nashoba Systems in the late 1980s when they purchased FileMaker, Apple’s Claris software division released FileMaker Pro 1.0 in 1990.įileMaker Pro’s very Mac-like interface, striking a near perfect balance between ease-of-use and power, made it an instant standard.īig SQL database servers were pretty much the realm of other platforms in that era.

Most of us remember the days when Mac databases pretty much meant one thing: FileMaker Pro.

Filemaker pro alternatives