FileMaker

The desktop app is based on a DOS application originally named FileMaker, which was then developed primarily for the Apple Macintosh and released in April 1985.

FileMaker began as an MS-DOS-based computer program named Nutshell, developed by Nashoba Systems of Concord, Massachusetts in the early 1980s.

Nutshell was distributed by Leading Edge, an electronics marketing company that had recently started selling IBM PC-compatible computers.

[1][2] With the introduction of the Macintosh, Nashoba combined the basic data engine with a new forms-based graphical user interface (GUI).

[1] Shortly after FileMaker 4's release, Apple Computer formed Claris, a wholly owned subsidiary, to market software.

Version 4.0, introduced in 1997, added a plug-in architecture much like that of Adobe Photoshop, which enabled third-party developers to add features to FileMaker.

Version 8.5, released in 2006, added an integrated web viewer (with the ability to view such things as shipment tracking information from FedEx and Wikipedia entries) and named layout objects.

FileMaker 9, released on July 10, 2007, introduced a quick-start screen, conditional formatting, fluid layout auto-resizing, hyperlinked pointers into databases, and external SQL links.

FileMaker Go 12 brought with it multitasking, improved media integration, export of data to multiple formats and enhanced container fields.

FileMaker Go 13, the parallel iPad–iPhone product, became a single client for both devices, and the Server Admin tool now ran in HTML5, no longer requiring a Java app.

At their annual developers conference in August 2018, FileMaker Inc. initiated a new marketing program called "Workplace Innovation Platform" to address the problem of its self-described software category.

[7] On September 27, 2016, FileMaker Cloud was introduced, including a Linux server (CentOS), which was offered exclusively through the Amazon Marketplace.

FileMaker is available in worldwide English, Simplified Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish.

The Central European version FileMaker includes English, Russian, Polish, Czech and Turkish interfaces.

In addition Russian, Greek, Estonian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Serbian, Bulgarian and Hungarian are supported to varying degrees.

The version intended for Southeast Asian languages has only an English user interface, but supports Indic-language data entry, sorting and indexing in Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Panjabi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.

Similarly, the Middle Eastern version has only English and French user interfaces, but with its option to change the text direction to right-to-left, it does support Arabic and Hebrew data entry.

In Julio Torres's 2023 film Problemista, a major story element is the insistence by the character Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton) that her husband's art be catalogued using FileMaker Pro, "the Cadillac of archival software," and her refusal to consider alternatives like Google Sheets.

The character Alejandro (Torres) falsely claims familiarity with FileMaker Pro with the hope that Elizabeth will sponsor his work visa.