2009-02-05 Family Tree Maker 2009 Service Pack 1 Available

Family Tree Maker 2009

Service Pack 1

Windows XP

On 2009 Feb 5, Ancestry.com has released Family Tree maker 2009 Service Pack 1. It should install automatically if you allow automatic updates. Otherwise, just choose Help | Check for Update from the program menu.

Windows Vista

Straightforward attempts to update do work if you run Family Tree Maker on Windows Vista. Family Tree Maker refuses to comply with a message stating that you need administrator privilege.

Family Tree Maker 2009 update requires Administrator privilege

The update should work fine if you choose to "run as Administrator". There is just an annoying frequent need to click and confirm that you really want this update.

first impression

The Service Pack install did not make a good impression. Many programs obtain their updates without demanding that you run the program with administrator privileges, or that you keep confirming your desire to perform the upgrade umpteen times.

tampering

Once the update was done, I got to see a message box claiming that Family Tree Maker has detected that your registry keys may have been tampered with. If you experience problems with the application, you may need to perform an un-install and a re-install to fix the issues.

Family Tree Maker 2009 complaining about registry keys

There is no indication what might be wrong, nor why the update program believes the registry keys to have been tampered with. My first thought was that the updater might believe the keys have been tampered with because it expect defaults settings, and I did not choose to go with all the Ancestry.com defaults upon installation, but dared to install the program on another drive.

FTM complains about FTM changes

However, I soon discovered that it is not the updating component that display this message box, it is the main Family Tree Maker 2009 itself. The update process ends with a restart of Family Tree Maker. Since applying the updated, Family Tree Maker insists upon displaying this uninformative message every time it is started. So the updated Family Tree Maker seems to complaining about whatever the update changed…

That behaviour does not create the impression that this update has been tested at all. As a consequence, this message box tampers with my hope that Ancestry.com is beginning to care about software quality.

version

Apart from the message box issue, my first impression after the upgrade was done was that the program seemed to work like before. Once updated, the version number is 18.0.0.305.

FTM 2008

To perform the update, you should be running either version 18.0.0.86 or 18.0.0.95. Thus, the update applies to version 18, the "Family Tree Maker 2009" Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) only, and not to Family Tree Maker 2008.

Users of Family Tree Maker 2008 presumably need to call and ask for their free upgrade to FTM 2009. There is no information about this on either the download page or the Family Tree Maker blog announcement about this update.

Despite its promises and the already massive delay, Ancestry.com seems to be ignoring the many Family Tree Maker 2008 users still out there. I hope this is merely an oversight that will be rectified soon.

FTM 2009 software update guide

Ancestry.com has posted a Family Tree Maker 2009 Software Update Guide. That is not a guide to help you install the update, but a quick overview and quick descriptions of the major new features. The major new features are

Extended Family Chart
Calendar
keyboard shortcuts
Source Templates
Desktop Book Building

This list corresponds pretty well with the list of future features in the 2008 August Family Tree Maker 2009 announcement.

known issues

The a Family Tree Maker 2009 Software Update Guide is a fairly brief document that ends with a list of known issues. These include repository information being lost if you transfer a source to a template without a repository field, and limitations transferring books from earlier version of Family Tree Maker.

The automatic update does not call attention to this document, and the download does not mention it either, but the Family Tree Maker blog entry by Tana L. Pederson links to it.

early user feedback

The update seems to have been released on 2009 Feb 5, while it was still February 4 local time at Ancestry. There are complaints, even some dated 2009 Feb 4, from early downloaders on the Family Tree Maker blog about things no longer working and FTM crashing.

User Kathie Marie even provides a long detailed report in the blog comments about particular defects she reported in the past, and essentially concludes that the reported problems have still not been fixed.

Michael Seamans calls the update Worse than Microsoft Vista! and horrid. He states that This update is RIDDLED with bugs! and asks Where is the testing and QC that’s supposed to come with software?. He reports that At a couple of times, I got error messages that my computer ran out of memory - pretty tough to do when its the only program running on a laptop with 1GB of memory & a 1GB+ pagefile. and that FTM runs extremely slow performing simple tasks, even when its NOT eating a ton of memory.

Jill Duff calls it One step forward… two steps back… and reports Two crashes in two minutes.

Already, several commenters remarked that they switched back to FTM 16 or FTM 2006.

updates

2011-04-23 Software Update guide

Ancestry.com seems to have withdrawn the FTM 2009 Software Update Guide. The broken link has been removed.