Why and How Do You Use Other Software?

[Bob White]

You may be overthinking this... The left side allows one to choose which kinds of media to see. The right side displays specific data for whichever item that has be selected in the collection. All media is in the large middle portion. Thus, I'm thinking that you might not have the real left panel displayed. It's a column with two tabs at the top for Collection and Detail.

[Kevin Forrester]

You are correct. I was starting out looking for "media" about "people" by clicking the "people" button at the top of my screen, then searching for a person under the tree tab, and then finding that person's media as I described. However, if I start out looking for "media" by clicking the "media" button at the top of my screen, I find, as you say, a "person" (or whatever) on the left, seeing the media in the middle, and the data on the right. Voila! Thank you!

And thank you for your excellent suggestion of using Family Tree Maker basically as a ready-made media filing system (when linked to Ancestry). I've been ignoring FTM as my main genealogy program because I was not satisfied with the way I was able to represent same-sex couples with children under FTM, but the idea of using it as a data repository is brilliant. I am now looking at if for that role only. And I've given up waiting for the RootsMagic 8 native Mac program, have received help from Reunion support on how to represent same-sex couples with biological children, and have decided to go "all-in" in Reunion 13 as my main genealogy program (why wait for a brand-new native Mac program when you already own a genealogy program that has been Mac all of its life?) The sticking point in my selecting a program was always the same-sex couple issue, and Reunion resolves that issue.

[Kevin Forrester]

Reunion is my main guy. However, I always keep the current version of FTM installed. The reason is twofold.

First, the majority of my research either is on Ancestry or I end up uploading items from all kinds of places to my tree on Ancestry.

This leads to my second reason ---- which is the synching of media between Ancestry and FTM. Do a synch and, voila, I have copies of all the media on my Mac. The only media that I include in Reunion's multimedia is photos of people. Everything else is easily found in my copy of FTM without my having to maintain a sensible filing system as I used to do for many years.

Bob, does this recent Ancestry change impact your use of Ancestry as a bridge to get your uploaded media into FTM (an idea which I have adopted)?
https://www.legalgenealogist.com/202...bCWdzTUHUjE7YM

I have unlinked my Ancestry.com tree from FTM and have started deleting things from Ancestry.com that I'm not willing to gift in perpetuity to Ancestry.com.

[Bob White]

Bob, does this recent Ancestry change impact your use of Ancestry as a bridge to get your uploaded media into FTM (an idea which I have adopted)?..........

It states: "As of the change, effective yesterday (3 August 2021), a user can’t change his or her mind about any content uploaded to Ancestry: as of yesterday, you’ve just gifted the rights to that content to Ancestry, forever."

I don't upload media in order to get it into my FTM. Why would I? Yes, I have said that I let FTM be my filing cabinet. I did not throw away my "sensible filing system." I still add items to that filing system and only rarely also upload an item to Ancestry.

I read this as being photos and documents uploaded by me. The great majority of my uploads to Ancestry is headshots of people. Most of the photos were not taken by me. Shoot! A large number of the photos are older than me and I was born during WWII.... So I don't "own" the photos anyway. At any rate, I see this as Ancestry claiming ownership to a copy while I still have my copy or original. Doesn't sound like anything that I'm going to lose any sleep about.

[Kevin Forrester]

I pay Ancestry dot com an annual fee for access to information they have collected in order for me to build my family tree. That is the transaction. Ancestry dot com pays me nothing for anything that I may have found outside of Ancestry dot com and uploaded to and through their website in order to build my family tree. The deal was, I pay them money for information. Now they have changed the deal. Now they want money for their information and want to pay nothing for my information. That deal won’t fly. The first thing I deleted was emigration records of my European relatives that were known and available only to family members. Ancestry dot com did not provide me with these important records and they did not offer to purchase them from me. They simply said, my records are now their records, forever. I don’t think so. The next thing I delete will be pictures of all of my living relatives. Ancestry dot com did not bargain for my family pictures or my family documents, and they are not going to get them from me.

[Kevin Forrester]

Ancestry retreats, by Judy G. Russell, “Ancestry retreats,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 6 Aug 2021.

[Catherine Alder]

“After struggling to find a means of "linking" my two Macs together, using iCloud is the first solution that has worked.”

Please explain how you link your two Macs using ICloud. Thanks

[Bob White]

One doesn't physically link them. Just sign both into the same iCloud account. Anything that you store in iCloud is visible on both devices plus your iPad and iPhone if you have those.

Go to https://support.apple.com/guide/icloud/welcome/icloud for a good explanation of how iCloud works.