Solutions For Family Tree Maker Retirement (finally) Announced

Post date: Feb 3, 2016 12:35:43 AM

In case you missed it, in a somewhat backward approach, Ancestry had announced on 8 December 2015 that it would be discontinuing support for its "award-winning software", Family Tree Maker, at the end of this year (2016).

See: Ancestry to Retire Family Tree Maker Software and Ancestry - A Day Late....

Well-run organizations tend not make product decisions that will impact their customers without knowing three (3) things; 1), which customers will be affected, 2) how these customers will be affected, and 3) how the organization will satisfy the needs of the customers who will be negatively affected.

To be clear, this 3rd step doesn't mean that the organization should have a vague idea of the types of things that might satisfy the needs of its customers, but rather that the organization must have a clearly-defined plan in place, as well as the ability to communicate such plan simultaneous with (or as part of) the announcement of the underlying planned change.

This 3rd item might only skipped if the organization doesn't care about the customers who will be negatively affected by the decision (i.e., they only represent a small portion of the customer-base, while the changes will positively affect a large percentage of their customer-base, and increase future revenues), or if the organization firmly believes that, regardless of the decisions that they make, their customers have absolutely no recourse (i.e., the organization believes that they have monopolistic control of their customers). I suppose that another explanation is an inexperienced Product Management leadership. Regardless of the reason, Ancestry clearly skipped this 3rd step.

It has taken nearly two (2) months for Ancestry to announce that they finally have a solution for their customers who would like to continue using a software solution similar to that which had been offered by Family Tree Maker. Today, Ancestry has two (2) competing solutions; 1) continue using Family Tree Maker, and 2) switch to RootsMagic.

In the announcement that I received from Ancestry (see below), Ancestry stated that Software MacKiev is "acquiring the Family Tree Maker software line as publisher for both Mac and Windows versions." Judging by the copyright notice on Software MacKiev's website, however, it would appear that perhaps this purchase has already been finalized.

"© 2016 The Software MacKiev Company. FamilyTree Maker is a registered trademark, and Software MacKiev and the Software MacKiev logo are trademarks of The Software MacKiev Company. Ancestry.com and TreeSync are registered trademarks of Ancestry.com Operations, Inc."

The announcement goes on to state that "Software MacKiev has been the developer of Family Tree Maker for Mac for more than six years." For anyone who has attempted to use Family Tree Maker on a Mac, or for anyone who has known others who have attempted to do so, this is cause for concern. While previous versions of Family Tree Maker have been problematic for on the PC until the most recent release of Family Tree Maker 2014, Family Tree Maker for the Mac remains even more problematic than the PC version ever had been. Hopefully, these problems will not crop up again for the PC version, and hopefully Software MacKiev will be able to resolve these problems for the Mac given that the Family Tree Maker software will now be competing directly with RootsMagic.

You can sign up for "Family Tree Maker news" from Software MacKiev here.

I have not used the RootsMagic software in quite some time, so I can only comment on what I have seen on their website. With a proper integration to records on Ancestry.com, .FTM support, as well as TreeSync, RootsMagic looks likely offer some very strong competition to Family Tree Maker.

With RootsMagic's interface to records from FamilySearch and MyHeritage, Ancestry's decision to get rid of Family Tree Maker may be the beginning of a very slow shift away from the importance of Ancestry.com for many researchers.