Mac Genealogy

I'm a PC by day and Mac by night person.  I don't mind too much, as using the PC all day makes me feel a lot better about my Mac when I get home.

So onto the real subject and Mac Genealogy.  Mostly I'm using the internet for all the searches and data collection, so to be honest this doesn't make one bit of difference whether your working a PC or a Mac.  However where things get neat are in the Software I'm using and some of the filing and search capabilities built into the Mac.

For Software I'm using Mac Family Tree, which is a very comprehensive in terms of Genealogy with two and three dimensional family trees.  I do think that the database could have been done a lot better, but I also think that its working hard to conform to genealogy standards for GEDCOM files, so forces you to put data in certain places.

One thing is really lacks is a 'To Do' or an action list, so that when I come back to work I've been doing after a few days away, it would be easier to remember the key areas I am focused on instead of finding that I've redone some things.

I really like the ability to import all sorts of picture and image files for using as sources, it does this well and integrates nicely with the mac.

In terms of output, I haven't played with it a lot yet, but found it uploaded data pretty much straight away to Ancestry.co.uk in GEDCOM format.  However, I need to spend some more time on how descendant charts and family charts are presented.

Overall the software works well and has really helped me to collect my stuff together in a very organized fashion, instead of being in a mess in a series of folders.

I'm trying very hard to digitize all the information I receive, so that I can file it appropriately.  This has included scanning any paper documents that arrive including any certificates.  I've put all my stuff into relevant folders for census info, location info and people info, with subfolders for each of the topics ie 1851 census, individual family members and individual places.  One thing thats helped has been the quick look facility on the Mac enabling me to quickly work through files looking for exactly what I need.

More on the benefits of Mac Use later