Just found out about Bento being discontinued

[Dirtyharry50]

I know. I am late in getting the news. I bought Bento not too long ago and just got around to watching a couple hours worth of video tutorials for it last night in preparation for using it. Then I went to visit the web site just for the heck of it and found out the sorry news. Of course, Filemaker is happy to offer Filemaker Pro as a replacement which is very expensive overkill for my needs. I'm saddened they abandoned Bento with no plans for a replacement product to fill its place.

It's also a shame Apple doesn't offer a database app to go along with Pages and Numbers. But no!

Apparently Bento 4 does work fine with Mavericks. I am tempted to use it for as long as it still works which with a little luck might even be another OS X upgrade or two, who knows? Then again, maybe I should just abandon ship now. The thing is you can export your data to common formats so I should be safe there so long as I remember to do that before any upgrades to OS X that might break it.

It bugs me to toss fifty bucks out the window and I liked how it looked in the videos I watched. It looked just right for my needs and simple to use as well. I liked features like collections and smart collections and a ratings field, etc. I am just using this to track some things at home including my crazy obsession with computer and video gaming. I have a large library of games for various platforms to keep track of.

Anyway, sorry to ramble on but I poked around in the app store and didn't really see any alternative to Bento there with one exception and that was Tap Forms Organizer and Secure Database. This looks like it could fit the bill but I wonder if there are any other apps I should evaluate that compete with it? I wasn't thrilled to learn it has a known bug affecting the display of data which will be fixed whenever they get a version 2.0 out. I guess it is in beta now though.

So what do you think? Go for it for Bento for as long as it lasts or abandon ship and get Tap forms or is there another great entry level database for OS X I am unaware of? Something around the price range of Bento up to say a hundred bucks would be worth it to me for this.

Thanks for any replies.

 

[Jessica Lares]

I think you should wait it out. There's really no harm in doing so.

 

[FoxFifth]

For me the issue would be whether I wanted to spend the time learning Bento and how long that time spent would be useful to me. Another option you might look at is the "Base" part of the Libre Office suite. It is free. I have not used it so my recommendation goes no farther than being something to look at. http://www.libreoffice.org

 

[saberahul]

For Mac, I'd recommend looking into SQLite or MySQL. They are fairly straightforward and you can get by with NoSQL - though it's probably the easiest language to learn.

I have my own databases which I use to record things and the ability to manipulate the tables and queries as needed is very helpful.

 

[Dirtyharry50]

After spending some time today investigating Tap Forms which included visiting the developer's web site and viewing some demo videos he put up on You Tube and then reading some reviews comparing this product to Bento, it seems like a pretty ideal replacement.

The developer is working away now on version 2 which will be a free update for current users and which addresses some issues with Mavericks. I plan to use Bento until this work is completed and then make the switch. He did mention a price increase being possible as it is a substantial upgrade to forms layout in the app if I understood correctly on his site forums. So I will probably buy it sooner than later on MAS even though I plan to wait for the update to use it. It is half the price Bento was and offers companion iOS apps for iPad and iPhone that sync with dropbox or iCloud as well.

I'd highly recommend any other Bento refugees check into Tap Forms as well to see if you think it can fill the void being left by Bento being discontinued. Here is a link to the developer's web site:

http://www.tapforms.com

I almost forgot to thank you all for the replies! Thanks for stopping by with your thoughts and advice. It's always appreciated.

 

[mpantone]

I would shy away from using a discontinued database application, mostly because of the uncertainly in data migration to a new platform, especially since you're just getting started.

Now if you were a longtime Bento user and a stud DBA with a well-established database, you might be best to stick it out and see what happens.

I've witnessed relatively poor to extremely horrendous database migration efforts, don't know why anyone would deliberately put themselves in a place where future pain was highly probable and mostly avoidable.

But that's just me...