Filed under: Software, Features
TUAW first look: FileMaker announces Bento organizer app
When you've been creating and selling the same application for 20 years -- the most successful database on the Mac platform, and a contender on Windows -- and you're a wholly owned subsidiary of Apple, Inc. with plenty of customers in business, education and SOHO markets... well, what do you do for an encore?
FileMaker Inc. has a pretty good market with the namesake app, but as the Mac universe grows to include more families, independent professionals and first-time switchers, the full power and cost of a relational database may be more than these new Mac users need (and might actually be more scary than appealing, despite FM's legendary ease of use). Time for a light, personal-organizer version of that FileMaker power -- an iData, if you will. It's coming in January, for Leopard users only, and it's called Bento. (That's Backup.app on the left and Butler on the right. Hi, I'm Mike, and I'm a Cover Flowaholic.) Bento will cost $49 for a single-user license, with a $99 family 5-pack option.
The idea of the bento box -- one-stop lunching, with compartments for the individual bits of yummy -- gives you a basic sense of the product. With contact, calendar, tabular/relational data and media file embedding, Bento can serve as a basic organizer or a reasonably savvy database, with a lot of room in the middle. For those with long memories who are saying "Hey, wasn't there already some Mac databasey-thing called Bento?" -- yep, that was the name of OpenDoc's native file format (thanks Christina for the tip).
Gallery: Bento by FileMaker
Bento's time-limited preview version is available now for download; it expires in February after the on-sale date. We got a brief advance look (more details below) and there's a screenshot gallery for you to enjoy, but you'll best grok Bento by getting a copy and playing with it.
The first thing you're likely to notice is that this is a Leopard-happy app indeed; fields slide around each other, panes and windows scootch and splash away... do you smell what the Core Animation is cooking? Equally Leopard-riffic, although less splashy, is Bento's ability to directly display contact and calendar information from Address Book and iCal. This isn't an import or a sync, but the true live data from the PIM apps via their new APIs in 10.5. There's also Time Machine and Advanced Find support baked-in.
Since this is a relational database under the hood, those contacts, tasks and appointments can all be linked and interwoven with your other data. Got a party to plan or a lending list to manage? Contacts flow in from Address Book, RSVPs via a checkbox, and gifts received/thank you notes written are easily added on or imported via CSV.
You can create new records and layouts in Bento with ease, and the preconfigured templates have a clear iWork feel to them; there are more than 20 preset 'library' types (what you might call a database in FileMaker speak, but remember, database = scary). If you want to collect records from multiple libraries: that's a collection, which you can create statically or via a smart folder-style search.While Bento takes the majority of its look and feel cues from the iWork apps, there's a thread of iTunes running through it as well. Considering that a good chunk of PC-to-Mac switchers have already familiarized themselves with the iTunes Tao, this is a clever approach. The library templates are dynamically modifiable; it may feel a little strange to be dragging and dropping columns and address zones around, but it's definitely appealing once you play with it a bit. The tabular data features are basic but they cover day-to-day needs (summing columns, etc.) quite well.
There are some obvious areas for improvement in this preview version; my major missing link would be stronger integration with Mail, since so much personal information management gets routed via email. Import/export is limited to text files, so the upgrade path to full FileMaker is not that smooth.
There are plenty of specialized apps that could handle either the PIM layer or the information and asset management tasks with more aplomb, but that's not the point of Bento. For those still hanging on to AppleWorks databases (you know who you are), or the folks who could benefit from a bit more organizational oomph without the cost and learning curve of FileMaker or other power apps, you might sample Bento and like the taste.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Danny said 1:29PM on 11-13-2007
I think this is a very welcome development. Both Access and Filemaker (even recent versions) are really hard work, and one of them doesn't even run on a Mac. Although FM is better than Access for building a front end quickly, it's still much tougher going than it should, especially compared to modern apps.
If they've got the ease of use right -- and it's tough with relational databases to do that, but a lot easier if you're not trying to keep legacy users happy; no applications have suffered more than databases from the problem of keeping your existing users on board while trying to improve the interface / underlying user model -- I suspect this could be a big application. I work in a small organisation, as well as run my own small business, and have no choice but to use big and unwieldy database packages (Access and FM respectively). From the looks of it, this is just the sort of things that would see me right.
For me personally, Leopard is a way off (my iBook G3 won't hear of it) and it strikes me as a wee bit of a shame that it has to be this way. (After all, the engine at least of personal database is a very undemanding application indeed.) I guess Bento might bring Intel/Leopard closer for me.
If anyone tries this could they indicate in the comments whether or not it can do mail merging with Word and/or Pages.
cheers, Danny (from Scotland)
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Kee Hinckley said 2:27PM on 11-18-2007
Looks interesting. Clicked on the download trial link:
We apologize for the inconvenience...
An application error has occurred. Please try your request again later.
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Yaphi said 2:10PM on 11-13-2007
This lasted all of 5 minutes in my applications folder. I opened it and it's so un-intuitive when compared to Yojimbo, 1password, or Wallet. Nice try Filemaker, but you're in a crowded space.
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Chris said 2:37PM on 11-13-2007
Being in the education market and designing databases in Filemaker, I find this app fascinating, although I can't take advantage of the preview download since I'm still on Tiger. I'd be interested to see if Bento can use data from a shared Filemaker database and has a site license available. That's about the only way I'd see any usage of it around here.
They should bundle it with iWork too (I've always wondered why they don't bundle FM with iWork anyway...). That would make it a much more serious competitor for Office, since there isn't a database from MS available on the Mac.
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Castle said 2:44PM on 11-13-2007
Yaphi: This program does not intend to do the same thing as the ones you list. They're great programs in their own right, but they're not the same thing as this.
I'm extremely pleased to see this being developed. FileMaker has often being far too overkill for me, but has always been my only realistic choice for making the relatively simple databases I need. This looks to make life much, much easier. I've only been using it 10 minutes but already I'm impressed. Hopefully it'll hold up.
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Allan said 2:51PM on 11-13-2007
I did a quick look of it and tried exporting some filemaker databases as CSV files and importing them. It seemed to work very nicely. I was using filemaker pro, but it is really overkill for home use. This is much more like the appleworks database on steroids. It looks like it will be a great program. By the way, it looks like it stores the data in its database in the Bento Folder in your Applications support folder
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Deborah said 6:27AM on 12-02-2007
I have used FMP for several years (moving over from Access when I switched to Mac). I never used Appleworks Database because it was flat field, and I wanted a relational database, but I played with it for a few days a few years ago.
I have been playing with Bento now for a couple of weeks and have been somewhat frustrated by what it *won't do* because I have been comparing it to FMP. Your (Allen's) comment about Bento being an "appleworks database on steroids" really altered my mindset. I realized I was making the wrong comparison.
And, compared to a simple flat field database like the one in Appleworks, Bento is great! The ability to link fields makes viewing data more useful, and the automatic formatting makes creating forms a breeze.
Ed Wiser said 5:15PM on 11-13-2007
Boy I have this program crash several times trying to just set things up will wait for a stable build to try it out.
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Tim Donlon said 5:20PM on 11-13-2007
I'm waiting for this and my Apple itouch so I can finally dump my Palm T3!
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logista said 7:13PM on 11-13-2007
I get a message box telling me I'm not running a new-enough version of Leopard. I've got a 1-week-old Macbook with Leopard pre-installed. Not giving me any warm fuzzies for Bento.
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hachu said 7:55PM on 11-13-2007
Dude... the info.plist says they want Leopard build 9a581, which is the first release of Leopard. What's your macbook running?
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Dave said 8:09PM on 11-13-2007
This thing's great! No stability issues that others have reported.
I've wanted a tool like this to run my business with - integrated apps with custom forms. Too cool.
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Dave said 9:05PM on 11-13-2007
i'm still waiting for and email with the download link... 4.5 hours and counting.
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Michael Rose said 9:15PM on 11-13-2007
Download delays: Well, see, when you run your website on FileMaker there are these scaling issues under heavy load...
(oh, no he didn't!)
Sorry, couldn't resist.
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HandyMac said 9:21PM on 11-13-2007
So this is why there's no database in iWork... Okay, so, $79 for iWork, + $49 for Bento, + $95 for EazyDraw, + $59 for Pixelmator = $282 to make up an AppleWorks "equivalent" in OS X, only without the integration. Sure wish they'd just updated AppleWorks to full OS X citizenship.
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Joe Henry said 10:08PM on 11-13-2007
Um there wasn't an equivalent to Pixelmator in Appleworks unless
you're trying to equate the Paint program to it. I hope you're not
suggesting that.
Time to move on. Appleworks was a great bunch of apps. iWork and
Bento (what I've seen of it) are a fine replacement.
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Dave said 10:18PM on 11-13-2007
AppleWorks?!? That hasn't been good in like 5 years. Okay, perhaps that was a stretch but I never really liked those apps.
iWork rules and now Bento? It's a great time to be a mac owner.
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logista said 10:49PM on 11-13-2007
@10 Leopard version 9A3110 (Santa Rosa Macbook)
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wos said 12:14AM on 11-14-2007
I don't have Leopard so I can't test for myself, but I was wondering...
- What kinds of relationships are supported (one to one, one to many, many to many)?
- There is no record tagging, is there?
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FredB said 7:41AM on 11-14-2007
For those waiting for a download link:
Just go to macupdate[1] and click download.
No need to wait endlessly for the mail.
[1]http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/26231/bento
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