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Filemaker Introduces Bento for Mac



Filemaker has introduced a new personal database application for Mac OS X called Bento.
Bento organizes all your important information in one place. So you can manage your contacts, coordinate events, track projects, prioritize tasks, and more — faster and easier than ever before.
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Bento is described as being designed exclusively for Mac OS X Leopard and takes advantage of many Leopard-specific features, such as live linking to iCal, Core Animation, Advanced Find, Time Machine Backups and Multimedia features.

A free preview download is available. Filemaker, Inc. is a subsidiary of Apple and publishes FileMaker Pro for Windows and Mac OS X.

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looks sweet, which isn't surprising.

i'll try it just for the sake of trying it. wonder if it'll be standalone software or become bundled in with FileMaker
 
If it can sync events with Google Calendars, I'm sold.

Or, alternately, I could ask if someone knows how to enable two-way synching with iCal and Google Cal, that would be even better.
 
Before I even try it, I'm curious as to pricing. No mention of that. Why should I try a pre-release preview if I don't know if I would want to pay for it down the line. If it is $25-70 and really useful, maybe. If it is $100+ or so, don't think it's worth it.
 
Seems pretty sweet, definitely a "iLife" style database app if I ever saw one.

It'd be nice if it could connect to external data sources (e.g. a MySQL database), but I'm guessing I'm getting more into the Filemaker Pro territory with that kind of feature (I've never used Filemaker Pro so I have no idea what its like).
 
akac said:
I'm still trying to figure out its purpose.
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Well it's called Bento so it's a fair guess you can use it for storing sushi.

And it's made by FileMaker so it's a fair guess that people who know FileMaker and all of it's magical database abilities, but find it too massive and pricey for average home use, will probably consider this as a possible alternative for a home database program in which you can keep information on stuff like sushi parties, sushi dates, sushi recipes, an inventory of sushi sets you got for your wedding, and that cute little number you met at the sushi restaurant.

Chances are you can import all your contacts from Address Book and say, "Hey, Bento, find all my friends who live in the 123 area code, except for the ones with the last name "Gates", and send them an iInvite to this sushi party. Then show me all the events tagged "salmon" and mark them "sushi".
 
Orng said:
Well it's called Bento so it's a fair guess you can use it for storing sushi.

And it's made by FileMaker so it's a fair guess that people who know FileMaker and all of it's magical database abilities, but find it too massive and pricey for average home use, will probably consider this as a possible alternative for a home database program in which you can keep information on stuff like sushi parties, sushi dates, sushi recipes, an inventory of sushi sets you got for your wedding, and that cute little number you met at the sushi restaurant.

Chances are you can import all your contacts from Address Book and say, "Hey, Bento, find all my friends who live in the 123 area code, except for the ones with the last name "Gates", and send them an iInvite to this sushi party. Then show me all the events tagged "salmon" and mark them "sushi".
Click to expand...

Sounds a little too fishy to me.... :p

PS - I like sushi too! ;)
 
iApps like the integrated iCal, address book, mail, safari, etc. seems to already do everything that bento does. What functionality does it provide that the iApps don't?
 
It looks like we have our first Leopard only application. Delicious Library 2.0 is supposed to be Leopard only, but no word on when it is getting released.
 
What about importing from Palm Desktop and synchronizing with Palm PDAs? Then it would be perfect and to get rid of old Palm Desktop once and for all!
 
Wow. All fluff, no substance. I can't figure out much of anything from the links so far. Is this like MS Access, or Outlook, or Journaler, Numbers with forms, or what?

Suppose I could download it and see for myself, but I'm not much of a fan of just downloading things I know nothing about...
 
It doesn't seem to have much use right out of the .dmg

Like FileMaker, it's no use unless you set it up for what you need, which is still probably confusing for people who have no idea what they're doing.

I use FileMaker quite a bit for work, and it's interesting to see how it's similar and different.

Perhaps I'll find some sort of use for it, but when it comes to the $$$ part, I'll just bust up some mySQL or postgre and PHP if I really need a database that much.

Now if this thing has web accessibility (more than just .Mac), I could really see it being useful, but I haven't had a chance to look into it all that much.
 
If FileMaker is any indication, they'll dole out new features a few at a time and charge 60% of the selling price for the privilege of buying these "new versions."
 
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