Family Historian User Group

I am very happy with FH4, but have recently purchased an iMac i5. At the moment, I have to use my PC for genealogy, with everything else on the iMac. As FH4 does not have a Mac version I am reluctantly considering Reunion as an alternative. My questions are: Does anyone know how Reunion compares to FH4, Can gedcom files be easily exported from one system to the other? Any other points that I should consider. I will be putting this on the Reunion forum, but value the FHUG forums view. It may be that I will decide to retain FH4 as it is so good.

If I did decide to go Reunion, does anyone know whether there is a market for a'used' FH4?

Bill

ID:4501

I think realistically you're not going to be moving your data back and to between Family Historian and Reunion. If you want to use Reunion then that's fine, but you might as well forget about Family Historian (and Ancestral Sources or Gedcom Census!) as you'll just find it too much hassle messing around with the data transfer.

I don't use a Mac (or have any desire to!) but I believe that some people do use FH on Mac by using virtual machine software. Perhaps someone can advise you on this.

Nick

Thanks for your reply. I do not wish to go back and forth between FH4 and Reunion, nor do I want to use an emulator. I was simply trying to establish how much functionality, I would lose, if I moved to Reunion, for the sake of the convenience of having everything on one machine. If the loss is too great, then I will stick with FH4 (which I have said that I am very happy with) on my PC.

Bill

Ah OK, when you asked how easy it was to export from one to another I assumed you meant back and to. I now see that you just meant from FH to Reunion.

As a matter of interest why would you not want to use a virtual PC?

Nick

Nick

I am fairly new to the Mac, but as I understand it, the Mac hardware and the software to go with it, are all geared to operate with the Mac OSX which is the equivalent of Windows. Whilst Mac allows Windows to run on its hardware with Bootcamp or one of the emulators, VM Fusion or Parallels, the compromise is on performance. My Nephew has just tried it on his Mac Laptop and it slowed the performance. Having just spent a lot of money to migrate to the Mac format, I do not want to compromise, with a hybrid machine.

Bill

Hi Bill,
  I use Parallels on my MacPro to run Windows Vista, and FH4 and am not seeing any performance issues, in fact the reported 'spec' of the PC is more than any PC i have actually owned. I am also quit happily runnng the MAC apps' (like Adobe photoshop) in the background.

What was the spec of the Mac Laptop, as maybe being a laptop the graphics spec and memory were not really up to running the virtual machine ? If your IMac is of a reasonable spec, then you should have no trouble.

Richard

Hi Richard,

I am not sure of my nephews Laptop Spec., but I know that he is an aficionado of Mac, so I doubt that it is under specced. Maybe my reasoning, is a combination of keeping the iMac 'pure' allied to cost. I would have to lay out probably £150 i.e. c£100 for XP or Windows 7 and another £50 for Parallels. This just to continue with FH4. That is more than twice as much as Reunion costs.That is my dichotomy.

Regards

Bill

Bill,

I had PCs for years and eventually switched to Mac and then Reunion. I was totally frustrated at having always to buy anti virus software and find it hard to believe that Mr Gates can't build a better operating system which is less hackable and subject to blue screens and other hangups. I tried using Parallels; thinking that I wanted to stay with FH and other pc software, but I found it a nuisance, not because I couldn't run a PC program well on the Mac, but because I needed to access the net and other software and often forgot which operating system I was in. This often meant that the Mac would cease to operate which was frustrating, to say the least.

I have found Reunion excellent. It won't be to everyone's taste as it has an American bias - nothing wrong with that but many prefer the English authored FH. FH still has better Diagrams - editable on the fly, but Reunion's trees look more professional IMHO. The on screen manual and the Reuniontalk Forum are both excellent. i find that once you get the hang of it ,the way Reunion deals with sources is also great.

For me, FH is the best PC program on the market, but I have no regrets about having chosen Reunion. Perfection for me would be to stay with reunion, but also to have FH4 for Mac[smile]

Hope this helps

Like rclrocco, I'd had enough of anti virus, blue screens and other Windows irritations - so went and bought a mac. Imagine my disappointment when I found that FH wouldn't work. I looked at Reunion but it is very American, so I bought myself a netbook just to run FH4. And it's the best decision I made. I get to use the superfast virus free the Mac when I'm at home and can keep FH going whilst on the move - usually stuck on a train or a plane somewhere.[smile]

uktony
Thanks for your input. However, I have decided like rclrocco to cut the umbilical cord with Windows. Having made the very expensive decision to move to Apple, it seemed to me that I wanted everything in the Apple format, otherwise I would not be gaining the benefits of my new computer. Like you, I stiill have a Windows laptop, which I could fall back on, but at the moment, I am trying to make Reunion work,

First of all let me say that if there was a Mac version of FH4 I would be on it, but there isn' t so Reunion is the only alternative. I have had it a few days but I have imported my files and documents from Fh and am now up and running. I have now got more photos on my charts than I ever did on FH, mainly because handling photos on the Mac, is so easy. Another benefit of having Reunion is that it has an iPhone App, which allows me to carry my entire genealogy records in my pocket. Furthermore, I can make ammendments to my Mac through the iPhone, wirelessly, as syncing is a breeze. I do not think that Reunion is as reliable as FH, nut that might be my not understanding the limitations.

Thanks for taking an interest.

Bill

Reunion isn't the only choice actually - there is also MacFamilyTree:

http://www.synium.de/products/macfamilytree/index.html

However, I have bought and used both Reunion and MacFamilyTree and don't care much for either of them. Neither mirrors the structures of GEDCOM very well and consequently importing a GEDCOM from FH tends to discard all sorts of things as they don't have anywhere to store them. Things like addresses and causes of death went AWOL amongst other things. Neither was the GEDCOM export up to much. Both are too limited for serious genealogy IMO, even if they do look pretty. I run XP in Parallels and continue to use FH for now, in the hope that one day there might be a serious competitor on the Mac. I still use Microsoft Money too, as the Mac equivalents in that arena are not much cop either.

XP runs faster in a virtual machine on my Mac than it does running natively on my work laptop. There really isn't a performance issue except with certain specific things like gaming, where Bootcamp would be necessary. With Parallel's Coherence mode and MacLook, FH just runs in a window along with the other native Mac apps and looks like one too. Plus using software which does not use GEDCOM as its database format means you can't use GEDCOM-based tools like Ancestral Sources - some would find that a big loss.

Hi Steve,

Sorry I did not reply sooner but I have been abroad for a few days.

First of all, I respect your views, though it does seem that you are rather scathing about all things Mac except the fact that it can run Windows in virtualisation faster than your Windows laptop!

I do not wish to provide PR for Reunion on a FH forum, but your comments about it being too limited for 'serious genealogy' damns a few Mac users, and from the Reunion Forum there seems to be a few serious genealogists using it.
Furthermore, my experience is that all my addresses and illnesses, deaths etc., have been imported. The only problem that I have had was with some multimedia items, where the Reunion people said that FH had not used gedcom that conformed with the standard.

Also as I said previously, if you have an iPhone you can carry your Reunion files around with you on research trips, and make amendments which can be wirelessly uploaded or downloaded. This is something that FH4 does not currently have.

Whilst I accept that FH4 is superior in many ways, I do not accept that Reunion is 'pretty' or lightweight.

Bill

First of all, I respect your views, though it does seem that you are rather scathing about all things Mac except the fact that it can run Windows in virtualisation faster than your Windows laptop!

On the contrary, I switched 18 months ago and there is a great deal of very good and innovative software for OS X, and I can't contemplate ever returning to Windows, even though I still have to use Windows 7 for work. However, until the switch to Intel processors, there was less incentive for developers to compete functionality wise with mainstream Windows software. Some examples include Quicken for Mac which is not the same product as the Windows version, Photoshop Elements which always lags behind the Windows version by a generation, and Microsoft Office which is similarly behind the main development.

Since the Intel switch there is now some real competition due to easy integrated virtualisation and it is having a positive effect already. But it also means that some developers in very specific categories are having to compete with 100 products instead of a couple, which raises the bar for functionality and standards compliance. FH and MS Money are the only products I use virtualisation for - everthing else is OS X.

I do not wish to provide PR for Reunion on a FH forum, but your comments about it being too limited for 'serious genealogy' damns a few Mac users, and from the Reunion Forum there seems to be a few serious genealogists using it.
Furthermore, my experience is that all my addresses and illnesses, deaths etc., have been imported. The only problem that I have had was with some multimedia items, where the Reunion people said that FH had not used gedcom that conformed with the standard.

Unfortunately the GEDCOM standard for media is somewhat lacking, and many developers have taken a few liberties with how to improve it. The standard has not changed since 1996 which is a lifetime in software terms, and it's about time there was some impetus for a consortium of interested parties to produce a new GEDCOM version. However a great deal of software does not even implement all the current standards, which becomes a problem when you want to move between software or even routine things like exporting to Ancestry or Genes, or run your own web server with software like TNG.

I've writtem some GEDCOM converters that I used for imports into MacFamilyTree (which I still use as a viewer) and Reunion that fixed the media import, but there were other problems that were insurmountable. If the software has nowhere to store a particular data item in its own database, it can't import it.

With MacFamilyTree I got round things to a certain extent by converting some things on the fly to notes, but this strategy didn't work so well with Reunion. Events only have a single 'memo' field which doesn't map well onto GEDCOM events that have multiple text fields. Repositories, sources and citations didn't import exactly as they appear in the GEDCOM either. From memory, there were a few peculiarities in the Reunion user interface too. For example the version I bought a year ago would not let you see events for a individual in date order in some views. It insisted on grouping them by type so that you got all the residence events lumped together, then all the occupations, etc.

I dare say if you start with a particular product then you work around the issues from day one and don't miss what you aren't getting from a more comprehensive product, but going the other way when you have been using the full extent of the GEDCOM standard, not so much.

Also as I said previously, if you have an iPhone you can carry your Reunion files around with you on research trips, and make amendments which can be wirelessly uploaded or downloaded. This is something that FH4 does not currently have.

That is true, but at the same time it's implying that FH users don't have access to their tree on their iPhone/iPad, which isn't the case if they have an Ancestry account which they upload their GEDCOM to. Ancestry has a free iPhone app, so in that scenario any software that can export GEDCOM can be used with it, if you have an Ancestry account.

The Reunion (and MacFamilyTree) iPhone apps have an advantage in that they are synching directly with the software rather than going through Ancestry as a middleman. That means that edits update the database directly. Although you can edit the tree in the Ancestry viewer, it's less practical if your main tree is on your PC/Mac rather than on Ancestry itself, because you would need to get the changes back out of the Ancestry tree and into your local one. Re-exporting the GEDCOM from Ancestry and overwriting the FH one would be disastrous, as a ton of stuff would disappear.

I am developing an iPhone app which will integrate directly with a GEDCOM file via a minimal application on the Mac/PC that just handles the synching, meaning anything can be edited on the iPhone/iPad and synched. I don't have a timescale because it's a low priority project, but in principle it should be feasible. I am a lead developer for a large software company and have high standards - if I can't complete it to my satisfaction, then it won't get released. I would prefer it if Calico Pie wrote one of course, but the beauty of GEDCOM is that it's possible for third party developers to use FH's database.

Whilst I accept that FH4 is superior in many ways, I do not accept that Reunion is 'pretty' or lightweight.Bill

Maybe that was a bit harsh, but my reasoning I believe is sound - that since it does not replicate internal GEDCOM structures fully, in some circumstances data would be lost. The more extensive the research that has gone into building the tree and collecting and recording information, the more likely it is that something would disappear, so the probability is that the more people have invested in their research, the more likely the problems. I am pleased that you find it works well for you, but it may not work quite so well for everyone. If we were talking about going from most other software to Reunion (or MacFamilyTree) I would not have those reservations to the same extent.

Hi Steve,

Well, my topic has certainly stimulated some debate! Thanks for your very comprehensive response, it is well taken and much appreciated. Quite clearly, based on your response, you are light years ahead of me technically. I am only a user, whereas you are a user/developer, no contest!!

Thanks for the time you have taken, to debate my topic. This is what makes FHUG such a good forum.

Bill

Just to add my tuppence worth to this debate. I too am running FH through Parallels on my Mac.

It is the only windows program I still use and as such I have certainly not noticed any problems with performance. When we replaced our PCs with Macs I actually bought a mac program, 'MacFamily Tree' which was fine but I still preferred FH. I much prefer the diagrams and reports so I went back to version 3 of FH. I have since upgraded to version 4.

The next time I buy any Family History software, will be if and hopefully when FH bring out a version for the Mac.

Incidentally we originally had version 3 of Parallels and had to upgrade to version 4 when we upgraded to the Snow Leopard operating system

Linda