It’s more that I haven’t really seen many examples of Access or FileMaker applications in the wild for a while. Most of these were CRUD apps that were able to be moved to the web. But that doesn’t mean that typical users are any more capable of navigating hosting setups for modern CRUD web apps.
The FileMaker example I saw was really for a legacy shop that was primarily used for existing applications. Nothing new was being added.
But I’m sure there are more examples in the wild than I would have seen. I was curious what the larger HN community has seen or has experience with.
I mean, for me, I’d probably put something in a SQLite database and build a simple web GUI on top of it. But I know that’s an option. What does a typical office worker do these days? Put everything in Excel? (That’s probably the answer)
Well thats the crux. While the display may seem simple (a grid, a few controls), a Web UI CRUD app, while routine today, is NOT simple.
While it's been 20+ years since I dealt with either, you can create table, get a navigable (and perhaps other features), and a CRUD detail screen in just a few minutes of drag and drop.
And it's right there, on your machine, no cognitive load about, well, anything, and ready to go. Another 10 minutes and you have a printable report spewing out on your laser printer.
It's quite a first step to go beyond the wizard based stuff into BASIC and such, but the fundamentals are there. And the fundamentals are useful out of the box.
You can set up a usable Access DB and MS Word Mail Merge in probably 1/2 hour of reading some tutorials.
Finally, out of the box, the screens look "ok". Your collection of fields conveniently fill the window nicely. You don't have a 21" x 12" white, barren canvas with Name, Address, C/S/Z and two buttons crammed up in the upper left corner. "Gee why is the font so small?" So now you don't have to fall down the rabbit hole to try and make your simple form even baseline "presentable".
It is curious that MS (afaik) does not have a way to drag and drop an Access application and have it "deploy" to the web, and (afaik), Access isn't part of Office 365 either.
Which is fair, if FileMaker existed in a vacuum. The inflation-adjusted cost of software and hardware has consistently trended downwards over the past 40 years.
As someone that pays for commercial software, only if you are talking about race to the bottom on mobile stores.
A proper PC or Apple device, proper being the keyword, not throwaway gear under 500 €, is as expensive as always, when buying hardware with 5 to 10 years expected lifetime in a professional setting.
In terms of software, commercial quality software is now often free and/or open source. Maybe the best application software is still expensive, but free software is better than anything that existed a two decades ago let alone four decades. The only people deploying Windows Server these days are doing so for legacy reasons, not by choice.
In terms of hardware, a Macintosh Plus vs a MacBook Neo. The latter is many orders of magnitude superior in any metric you could possibly imagine, and it's 1/10th the price in real dollars. Even if you insist on a "serious" laptop it's still 1/4th the price.
Year Example Price Real 2026
---- ----------------------- -------- ----------
1986 Compaq Portable II (286) $3,500 $10,700
1996 Dell/Gateway Pentium 166 $2,500 $5,300
2006 Dell XPS (Core 2 Duo) $2,200 $3,650
2016 Dell XPS 15 $1,500 $2,100
2026 Dell XPS 14/16 $2,000 $2,000
Year Example Price Real 2026
---- ----------------------- -------- ----------
1986 Macintosh Plus $2,599 $7,900
1996 Power Macintosh 7200 $2,000 $4,300
2006 20" iMac $1,699 $2,800
2016 13" MacBook Pro $1,699 $2,360
2026 14" MacBook Pro (M5) $1,999 $2,000
Year Example Price Real 2026
---- ----------------------- -------- ----------
1986 Novell NetWare $3,000 $9,100
1996 Windows NT Server 4.0 $1,100 $2,400
2006 Windows Server 2003 $1,000 $1,660
2016 Windows Server 2016 $900 $1,250
2026 Linux $0 $0
Year Example Price Real 2026
---- ----------------------- -------- ----------
1986 Early pro NLE systems $50,000 $152,000
1996 Adobe Premiere 4.2 $800 $1,700
2006 Final Cut Pro $1,000 $1,660
2016 Final Cut Pro X $300 $420
2026 Da Vinci Resolve $0 $0
And all of these tables are actually unfair because the newer stuff is way, way, way, way better than any of the older stuff. If we were being fair, the old computers should be absolute top-of-the-line models and the 2016/2026 models should be a Raspberry Pi.
A Macintosh Plus was only affordable under university student discounts in Portugal, and hardly seen anywhere.
MacBook Neo is a nothing to talk about with its 8 GB and phone motherboard, I specifically mentioned "A proper PC or Apple device, proper being the keyword, not throwaway gear under 500 €, is as expensive as always, when buying hardware with 5 to 10 years expected lifetime in a professional setting."
Neo isn't such device, my current hardware has 32 GB.
Your examples miss the relation of salaries, life cost and related percentage to hardware prices, per country.
The FileMaker example I saw was really for a legacy shop that was primarily used for existing applications. Nothing new was being added.
But I’m sure there are more examples in the wild than I would have seen. I was curious what the larger HN community has seen or has experience with.
I mean, for me, I’d probably put something in a SQLite database and build a simple web GUI on top of it. But I know that’s an option. What does a typical office worker do these days? Put everything in Excel? (That’s probably the answer)