A few days ago Bento, the database management application from FileMaker Inc. (a subsidiary of Apple), landed on the App Store. Bento as a database management application is well known on the Mac, so it was only natural to be excited about the iPhone version. The Mac version of Bento makes it easy, fun, and beautiful to create and manage databases. It’s geared towards home and small businesses, lending to ease of use, zero learning curve, and is a very good Mac application. We even did a screencast of it, in case you missed that.
Bento for iPhone, on its own
The iPhone version seeks to match up to its mighty desktop brother in functionality and looks. Let’s take a look at how it fares as a stand alone application.
It fails.
Using just the iPhone app, you can create new libraries and collections. Bento for iPhone comes with predefined templates for Projects, Contacts, Todo items, Recipes, Inventories, Expenses and others. All of this is presented in a very easy to use cover flow interface.
Say you want to create a new library to catalog your digital media. Upon choosing the template, it will bring you to a sort of contact-list like screen, with a single entry filled out so you know what you need to do. Tapping the plus button brings up the New Record view. That’s where the iPhone’s limitations as a rapid text entry device are apparent. You need to tap into Title, enter it, get out, tap into description, enter it, get out, tap Notes, etc., etc.. It’s very tedious filing out a single record, forget filling in your entire movie collection.
Getting the Mac into the picture
Okay, so perhaps Bento for iPhone wasn’t meant to be used a standalone application. That’s where the desktop sync comes in. With the latest version of Bento installed on your Mac, syncing it with the iPhone is a snap. In an instant, all my projects synced over to the iPhone in a few seconds.
On the main screen, all your projects are displayed in a cover flow view, just tap into it to bring up, well the same old ‘contacts-like’ view again. This considering I had painstakingly designed my templates on Bento for Mac, only to be shown some mundane view. Overall the user interface is a big downer when compared with the desktop version. As for viewing the entries themselves, once you tap into one of the items, and it shows you the details, with all the unused fields as well. Now those familiar with Address Book on the Mac know that it only shows you entries for those fields that are filled up. That is, until you need to edit those entries. Bento’s approach seems overwhelming, considering that I’d mainly use it to access data rather than to edit it.
One big miss is search. Using the search field will only go through certain fields like ‘title’ or ‘description’. I have a developer contact sheet with a field ‘Application’ listed over there. If I need to find the name of the developer who created ‘Flickery’, I just enter the app name and pop appears ‘Matthias Gansringler’. At least on the desktop version it does. Search is also sluggish to the point that I wouldn’t use it regularly. Still, it’s the first version so hopefully future versions will improve.
Disappointment; Acceptance.
Overall I’m disappointed with Bento for iPhone. But do I regret my purchase? Not one bit. At $4.99, to be able to mobilize your entire database, to be able to access projects without hunting down your Mac, and to be able edit any of the fields while on the go, it’s totally worth it.
