Comments on: Customer Feedback Drives Useful Improvements in Bento 4

By: Orchid

Orchid — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 17:11:27 +0000

I have had not joy in really getting to grips with Bento 3. There seems to be place eg Filemaker/Apple that can help with learning all that Bento 3. All tutorial are an overview and i’ve wasted ends hours reading and searching for help on this Software.
There should be step by step video tutorial on EVERYthing thats possible to acheive and someone who knows Bento when you book a one to one at the Apple store and a human support at Filemaker!

I will not be buying version 4 until I can see and find a great support in using Bento 3. it seems that filemaker and apple are just to make money on and idea that doesn’t follow through!

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 02:20:06 +0000

@NeilAsh

I also emailed about a calendar view after 3 was released. It is extremely odd that they have still not found a solution. Bento is worthless to me without it.

By: cogitoergomac

cogitoergomac — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 16:20:20 +0000

I have been very happy with this upgrade. Of course, I was pretty pleased with Bento 3 also. Label printing is great.

By: Brendon Dellar

Brendon Dellar — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 07:12:50 +0000

There are some quirks with Bento, but it has evolved into a useful product. Version 1 of Bento was almost useless and versions 2 and 3 were significant improvements. I haven’t noticed a huge difference between version 3 and 4, but the printing options are a step forward. Some quirks are fixed – For example, adding extra fields to address book through bento (like Doctors Name) does not sync with the iPad/iPhone version of Bento (they just appear as blank fields). Also, don’t use Address Book notes through Bento when subscribed to MobileMe. Strange things can happen and I’ve seen notes delete in front of my eyes during a MobileMe sync.

For basic tasks it is a useful little app to have. Version 4 seems much quicker than previous versions too.

By: Harry Hilders

Harry Hilders — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 15:39:16 +0000

Seems like a great app!

By: Weldon Dodd

Weldon Dodd — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 14:14:31 +0000

@NeilAsh – Bento isn’t meant to replace iCal, just work with it so you can link calendar events to other data in Bento. If you want a proper calendar view of your events, use iCal.

I’m not sure what you mean by manually importing iCal events into Bento. All my events and tasks from iCal and all my contacts from Address Book are automatically visible in Bento and available to link to other records.

By: NeilAsh

NeilAsh — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 04:19:13 +0000

After 18 months struggling to get Bento to work properly I’m *very* dubious about version 4.

I’ll give one example: The calendar has no calendar view.
Yes, you read that right, no calendar view. Imagine your iCal events listed in a big long spreadsheet or as hundreds of images (that you can’t read) with no ability to sort.
When I asked about this they said they’d submit the suggestion for review.
Submit it for review???

Also, you cannot set an event with an alarm in Bento. So you have to go to iCal to do that, but if you do so you will have to take the extra (5) steps to then import the event into Bento, it does not update automatically.
There are literally hundreds of similarly mind-numbing quirks that makes you wonder if anyone at Filemaker ever actually tried to use Bento. Everything in Bento must be manually imported, making organizing even basic things slow and tiresome. Emails can be viewed but again, not synced.

Notice that the reviewer, Weldon Dodd, never says he used Bento to actually do anything useful? No reviewer has.

While Bento is fabulous concept, I recommend you avoid it.