Apple's Claris launches beta of tool to create apps faster

The Apple-owned developer of FileMaker Pro has launched Claris Connect Beta, a system to make creating new business apps faster and more robust.

Claris has revealed a beta version of its forthcoming Claris Connect, a service that will use libraries of pre-existing code to help users speedily create new apps for business use. As well as leveraging the company's own longstanding FileMaker Pro database app, Claris Connect will utilize third-party services. It aims to give developers "hyper agility" in going from idea to an app.

"There have never been any limits on what our developers can create with Claris FileMaker, which is why we are widely deployed by everyone from SMBs to Fortune 100 companies," said Brad Freitag, CEO of Claris International, Inc, in a statement. "That said, the speed of digital transformation happening in every industry demands hyper-agility and the ability to go from idea to workflow in minutes. Claris Connect drives this forward."

Brad Freitag, CEO of Claris

Unveiled at the 2019 Claris Developers' Conference, Claris Connect is going to be a service built around integrating different workflows for small to medium-sized businesses. It will be released publicly in early 2020 and the beta program is accepting applications now.

"Claris Connect represents a significant leap forward for problem solvers to create better outcomes," said Srini Gurrapu, vice president of product management and design at Claris.

"With Claris Connect, simplicity and power no longer have to be a tradeoff," he continued. "Whether you are a citizen developer or pro developer, Claris Connect makes workflow automation easy and powerful."

Claris Connect was first previewed at FileMaker DevCon 2019 in August, and in demos there resembled services such as Zapier or IFTTT. Users can specify triggers that start an action, then create a workflow that sees information pass through a series of connected apps to get their end result.

Claris is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Apple, and the new service follows Claris's ">rebranding from its FileMaker, Inc name in August, as part of ongoing work to reposition itself as an app creation tool instead of a database.

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13 Comments

Eric_WVGG 8 Years · 969 comments

About 5 years ago

Why didn't Apple "sell" off Aperture to Claris?

philboogie 15 Years · 7669 comments

Apple should integrate it into iWork. Yeah, lost revenue, but right now it's overpriced anyway. Way overpriced. No, integrate it, resuscitate Bento, and bring back dogcow!

Eric_WVGG said:

Why didn't Apple "sell" off Aperture to Claris?

Uhm, because that was DAM software, therefore completely unrelated?

tenthousandthings 17 Years · 1060 comments

I laughed at the term “citizen developer” — used versus “pro developer” — but upon reflection it does somehow capture the essence of the distinction.

avon b7 20 Years · 8046 comments

philboogie said:

Eric_WVGG said:

Why didn't Apple "sell" off Aperture to Claris?

Uhm, because that was DAM software, therefore completely unrelated?

Not exactly. That might have been true of FileMaker Inc although there are a lot of parallels between DAM and database applications.

Just seeing the name Claris brings back great memories. In the original spirit of Claris Corporation (back then), something like Aperture rebuilt could find its (spiritual?) home.

Claris was a great collection of software titles, ClarisWorks being everybody's favourite I suppose.

Another great piece of software that would fit well is an application to fully open every single Apple format that has ever existed. No file should rot due to lack of format support.

I recently had to clear out a ton of old books but two will never leave my possession: Ted Landau's Sad Macs, Bombs and other disasters and a beaten up book on ClarisWorks 2.1. Those two titles were milestones.