New Contacts functions for FileMaker

As you may know Apple has two APIs for the address book. The older Addressbook API was introduced in Mac OS X 10.4 long ago. With MacOS 10.11 Apple introduced a second API called Contacts. Applications can use both. Sadly the don't both do the same features! This is similar to the calendar and reminder APIs where we have Calendar and Events functions.

Here is a comparison between Addressbook and Contacts APIs:

	Addressbook	Contacts
Minimum MacOS	10.4	10.11
Mac 32-bit	Yes	No
Mac 64-bit	Yes	Yes
iOS	Yes	Yes
Code Signature required	No	Yes, with entitlements
Multiple Accounts	No	Yes
Modification Dates	Yes	No
Trigger	Yes	Yes
Trigger Details	Yes	No
Search by Modification Date	Yes	No
vCard Import/Export	Single	Multiple
Set Me	Yes	No
Linked People	Yes	No
Set Primary Items	Yes	No
Format Address	Yes	Yes
JSON API	No, but could be added	Yes
Query Authorization Status	No	Yes

As you see, we need to code sign the FileMaker application to add the required entitlements for the new Contacts API. But once Contacts API works, we can use it to work with multiple accounts. Like if you use iCloud and Exchange, you can create a contact explicit in the one account you need.

For the foreseeable future, we will offer both APIs and you can choose. For synchronization we will want to use Addressbook as it provides modification dates for records.

New Contacts function will appear soon in next 8.4 prerelease.