MyHeritage Family Tree Builder for Mac

[gathompson56]

The folks at MyHeritage have published a mac version of their free Family Tree Builder software. This is not a true Mac version but a Windows version modified for Mac. They say that they are working on a true Mac version.

I downloaded the software and loaded a Gedcom of 230 individuals into FTB. First impression is that it works quite well.

What attracts me to this software is the ability to sync to your tree on their website. It sounds like it works similarly to Ancestry, once you have a tree on their site then you will be notified of research clues.

I will continue to use Reunion for building and refining my tree. Has anyone tried the syncing and research capabilities of the offerings from MyHeritage? Is this a duplication of Ancestry's product or is it complimentary?

[LyndaCook]

Re: MyHeritage Family Tree Builder for Mac

Yes, I have a MyHeritage account that I did for the source lookups. I received a copy of Rootsmagic 7 for Christmas and it gives you hints from both MyHeritage and FamilySearch.

My Reunion file is the bible and I use the other matches to sources to download the source to my computer and add the data to Reunion.

I'm not very interested in tree matches, it's the sources I'm after and I have to say Ive picked up a lot of sources from doing this. Primarily in the 'shirt-tail' relatives I haven't researched as completely as my direct lines.

The only thing ive found to be a problem is that I now get notifications twice, once from My and once from RM7. I don't know if I would have had a problem if I'd done the RN7 first. In any case I think it's important to keep your primary data on your computer. If you drop your MH account it stays on line but you can't correct any errors.


Hope this helps.

Lynda

[Bob White]

Re: MyHeritage Family Tree Builder for Mac

Really! Do you think that they could have made it look like a Mac application? No.....it's Windoze like in looks and operation. They didn't even bother to relabel commands, so you have Exit instead Quit, Options instead of Preferences, etc.... Information that I see in our main family view is spread across three tabs. Lots of extra mouse clicks.

Then you can't use it at all, period, unless you create a MyHeritage "free" account. A strange requirement if all you want to do is use it locally on just your Mac. Does not appear to have a companion iOS app.

Did I mention that it likes to crash? Played with it for about one hour and it crashed three times. It may be a popular app on the Windoze platform but it needs lots of work for the Mac. It is headed for my Trash bin.

[gathompson56]

Re: MyHeritage Family Tree Builder for Mac

Lynda: thanks. If you have an Ancestry account did find it complimentary to MyHeritage?

--------------------------------------

Bob: have a bad day?

Yes the MyHeritage for Mac is a Windows version that will run on a Mac. Seems to run well on my system. Yes they have an iOS version. Seems to run well without a MyHeritage web account.

You seemed to have missed the point of my post: Is its syncing to the web version and the research clues that it provides complimentary to the hints provided by an Ancestry tree?

[bbousquet]

Re: MyHeritage Family Tree Builder for Mac

Really! Do you think that they could have made it look like a Mac application? No.....it's Windoze like in looks and operation. They didn't even bother to relabel commands, so you have Exit instead Quit, Options instead of Preferences, etc.... Information that I see in our main family view is spread across three tabs. Lots of extra mouse clicks.

Then you can't use it at all, period, unless you create a MyHeritage "free" account. A strange requirement if all you want to do is use it locally on just your Mac. Does not appear to have a companion iOS app.

Did I mention that it likes to crash? Played with it for about one hour and it crashed three times. It may be a popular app on the Windoze platform but it needs lots of work for the Mac. It is headed for my Trash bin.

It IS the Windows version of the app running on a bundled version of WINE (a Windows emulator, more or less). I tried it and, while it seems to have a decent feature set, it crashed once and never ran properly afterwards. Others have done this before and it's always a lousy alternative to a native application.

[LyndaCook]

Re: MyHeritage Family Tree Builder for Mac

Really! Do you think that they could have made it look like a Mac application? No.....it's Windoze like in looks and operation. They didn't even bother to relabel commands, so you have Exit instead Quit, Options instead of Preferences, etc.... Information that I see in our main family view is spread across three tabs. Lots of extra mouse clicks.

Then you can't use it at all, period, unless you create a MyHeritage "free" account. A strange requirement if all you want to do is use it locally on just your Mac. Does not appear to have a companion iOS app.

Did I mention that it likes to crash? Played with it for about one hour and it crashed three times. It may be a popular app on the Windoze platform but it needs lots of work for the Mac. It is headed for my Trash bin.

So far I haven't had any crashes. Yes, it looks like crap, but I have no plans to share it. It does look like they are planning an iOS app, but not a major factor for me. I have Reunion and Ancestry on my iPad.

The one major plus is that right after I uploaded my gedcom, I got a hint on my late mother-in-law and I pulled up her marriage license. I had never been able to find any records on it, but by matching both MyHeritage and FamilySearch it found it. So as far as I'm concerned it paid for the time it took to set it up (remember it was a gift). It's also found some census records I hadn't located. As I said, to me it is a good resource to feed my primary Reunion file.

[gathompson56]

Re: MyHeritage Family Tree Builder for Mac

It's also found some census records I hadn't located. As I said, to me it is a good resource to feed my primary Reunion file.

Lynda: Ancestry was not able to find the census records or your mother in-laws records?

[LyndaCook]

Re: MyHeritage Family Tree Builder for Mac

Lynda: Ancestry was not able to find the census records or your mother in-laws records?

Not when I looked for it, and it hadn't shown up in hints yet either. I think it was actually in the FamilySearch records that RM7 found it.

I think I confused the issue when I mentioned RootsMagic 7. I have used MyHeritage on line for a couple of years and it has got records that I've not found on Ancestry, especially if you have international records. I find the family tree matching to be a PIA, but the records matches pretty good.

[Bob White]

Re: MyHeritage Family Tree Builder for Mac

........Bob: have a bad day? ...Yes the MyHeritage for Mac is a Windows version that will run on a Mac.......

Nope, actually a great day. I will double back on missing the point. I wasn't really responding to what you said. I was just offering my observations/opinions about this software.

Over the years, I have tried out most of the versions of most genealogy software on both platforms. Guess that makes me gene software nerd or something! On a scale of 1 to 10 of all the stuff I've looked at, I would give this software a 5 or 6. It's not horrible but it is a long way from wonderful, also. I started using Reunion in 1994 and it has survived all of my nerd work. I keep right on using it.

One program has stayed on my Mac and that is FTM 3. But, I don't use it as software. I use it as storage! Yes, I maintain nearly congruent trees in Reunion locally and on-line in Ancestry. You see... FTM 3 syncs found documents very slickly. So, a couple times a month, I fire up FTM 3 and let it sync with the on-line file and....voila, I have copies of all found items now on my Mac locally and the docs are easy to find because of association with a person.

With regard to the rest of this discussion, I have had the premium version of Ancestry for many years. For about three years, ending last year, I also had the premium version of MyHeritage. Early on with MH, it was finding some things that Ancestry hadn't turned up. But, over time, the search capabilities of both keep on improving. It got to the point where both were offering pretty much the same clues, so I decided to drop MH. No point in spending the dollars. Probably either one alone is just fine for research but having both is not necessary.

[gathompson56]

Re: MyHeritage Family Tree Builder for Mac

Bob:

Your process sounds similar to mine. I am building my tree in Reunion but using my Ancestry tree for research. Then my Ancestry tree is synced back to FTM3. I am not transcribing data from Reunion to FTM3. Now that I have settled into Reunion I really cannot make any sense of FTM3.

Thanks for your insight on using MyHeritage as a research tool. If it is not really complimentary to Ancestry then I will not head down that path.

[JamesWinfrey]

Re: MyHeritage Family Tree Builder for Mac

The folks at MyHeritage have published a mac version of their free Family Tree Builder software. This is not a true Mac version but a Windows version modified for Mac. They say that they are working on a true Mac version.

I downloaded the software and loaded a Gedcom of 230 individuals into FTB. First impression is that it works quite well.

What attracts me to this software is the ability to sync to your tree on their website. It sounds like it works similarly to Ancestry, once you have a tree on their site then you will be notified of research clues.

I will continue to use Reunion for building and refining my tree. Has anyone tried the syncing and research capabilities of the offerings from MyHeritage? Is this a duplication of Ancestry's product or is it complimentary?

There is, in my opinion, a serious flaw in MyHeritage. If you have any Residence events in your gedcom file you will notice they are gone when you upload to the MyHeritage file. Some of us use Census information as a source for where they lived, occupation, ages, etc. MyHeritage uses the Census itself as the event. So if you have numerous Residence events in your data, you will probably lose them all in the transfer.