You be the judge. Back on October 8th of last year someone submitted this comment on my post, “Reunion for Mac 9.0a Release Fixes Snow Leopard Incompatibility:
As you can read if you click on the picture above to see the full size version of the unapproved comment from my dashboard, the comment complains about Reunion’s interface and suggests that the person may switch to MacFamilyTree.
Something struck me as strange about this post, so I checked the IP address of the computer from which it was submitted. You can see it on the left side of the image. By the way, the blurry area above that is the email address that was entered with the comment; I didn’t want to make that public. Anyway, I popped the IP address into the “Lookup” tab of the trusty Network Utility app that comes with our beloved Macs (which you can do too, to see for yourself). Here’s what came back:
Lookup has started…
; <<>> DiG 9.6.0-APPLE-P2 <<>> -x 88.79.125.27 any +multiline +nocomments +nocmd +noquestion +nostats +search
;; global options: +cmd
27.125.79.88.in-addr.arpa. 43199 IN PTR office.synium.de.
The last line is the important one: the domain is office.synium.de; the Internet domain of the producer of the MacFamilyTree software. Apparently someone at Synium submitted the comment! That casts the comment in an entirely different light, doesn’t it?
This comment has been sitting in my queue, awaiting moderation since then. I’ve been torn about whether to make public the comment and my findings. Obviously I’ve decided to do just that—primarily for two reasons:
- It’s a reminder to think critically about opinions you encounter online.
- I’m sick of looking at it and not taking action one way or another (delete it or post about it).
So, you tell me: what do you make of the comment and the evidence?
Behind all postings may be a hidden agenda; examine everything you read. The conundrum of freedom of speech.
Shame on Synium. I’ll make it a rule to check twice — anything I see from those guys.
Have you followed some of the other posts to their origin? I do look at comments skeptically both positive (why is the person promoting the product?) and negative. We do need to be ever vigilant.
Hmm, thanks for bringing this to our attention. I tend to watch for comments like these when I’m on other sites, but never thought I’d see something like this here! I usually do take comments like this with a “grain of salt” and often think – go ahead and switch, we know the truth. I wonder if sending the snippet and the trace history to the owners of MacFamilyTree would serve any purpose? Probably not. Just deleting it would probably be the best way to handle it.
Thank you for your notice about being vigilant. I like to think that I am vigilant, but I had missed this entirely.
I’m sorry that someone at a competing company considered entering a comment like this one. Competition should be about product behavior, NOT about telling lies.
I’ve been using Reunion 9.0b (NOT 9.0a – is this significant?) with Snow Leopard ever since they came out. They work perfectly together.
I’ve no experience of Mac Family Tree, so can’t compare it with Reunion.
But the posting looks like a piece of disinformation intended to promote the latter, and I’d suggest you delete it.
Jennie,
I saw just one post from you, back in 2008, when I searched ReunionTalk.
Why not try posting your problem there? I never heard of a database so big that Reunion couldn’t handle it – unless you are very short of RAM, perhaps! You might find people with similar or even bigger Family Files.
I assume you do have version 9.0b…
If you really do think it might be because your file is too big, why not (a) back it up and (b) try splitting it into two files of around 38,000 names – oe even smaller chunks – and see if you still have crashes?
John.
I find it hard to vision someone of authority at McFamily Tree making such a posting. Probably some lesser minion.
I have both programs, but consider Reunion to be the one I rely on. It does everything we need and leaves one feeling they are serious about what they do.
If bells, whistles and tassels are your thing, then you will enjoy McFamily Tree!
Thank you for researching this comment for us!