For families who worry over whether they have missed a bill, or are frustrated because they constantly recreate shopping lists, meal plans, chore charts and weekly family events, the Bento 3 Family Organizer is the answer.
“Organizing a household is challenging for all of us. From paying bills to shopping, planning meals and other responsibilities, it’s a major job,” said Steve McManus, Regional Manager, Asia Pacific, FileMaker, Inc., in the press release. “The Family Organizer, together with Bento 3, helps make the task of organizing a busy family much easier.”
The Bento 3 Family Organizer is designed to work with Bento 3, which has received numerous media accolades including an Editor’s Pick award from Macworld. Bento 3 adds useful new features such as Grid View, integration with iPhoto, sharing data with others on a local network and securing data with 128-bit AES encryption. The Bento 3 Family Organizer also works with Bento for iPhone and the soon to be released in Australia Bento for iPad, so customers can organize their bills, shopping lists and other family management activities on an iPhone or iPad and then synchronize the information with their Mac.
FileMaker also provides the Bento Template Exchange, offering hundreds of additional ways to use Bento. The Bento Template Exchange is a Bento community site that showcases real-world uses and offers Bento templates that users can browse, download and import into Bento 3 and use on a Mac, iPhone or iPad. Today, Bento users have created and shared over 600 templates on the Bento Template Exchange.
FileMaker is the leader in easy-to-use database software. Millions of people, from individuals to some of the world’s largest companies, rely on FileMaker software to manage, analyze and share essential information. The company’s products are the FileMaker Pro line – versatile database software for teams and organizations, for Windows, Mac and the Web – and Bento, the personal database for Mac, iPhone and iPad. FileMaker, Inc. is a subsidiary of Apple.
Source: FileMaker, Inc.
Maybe I will finally have a need for it.
Why can’t Bento access Filemaker served databases?
I have an office full of people who need access to my fmp severed files, but will never make their own databases. But Filemaker wants them to buy fmp to use my severed fmp files.
Silly and a huge waste of money.
P.S. don’t tell me about sharing through a browser, the databases are too highly structured.
Bento is affordable for me to buy for everyone in the office, especially for people who won’t ever make their own databases.
deepdish:
Ask them – http://www.filemaker.com/support/user_groups.html
Just called Apple about iPad WiFi+3G shipping particulars. The 3G models are all currently in the United States. I live in a suburb of Pittsburgh, and the representative I talked to said the iPad will be shipped from my closest Apple Store, and it will be on my doorstep on the 30th.
Sincerely apologize for putting this in the comments of an unrelated story, but I just wanted to relay this information to the Apple community.
And as far as billing your credit card is concerned, you would have received a notice from Apple if your card wasn’t authorized. Your card isn’t billed until the product is actually shipped.
“severed”? Really?
Yeah, deepdish is a brain sturgeon.
I find Bento to be absolutely useless on the iphone. So much so that I have not purchased it on my Mac. No Table views and static and junky UI’s on the iPhone make it completely useless.
For the iPhone I would go with HandBase. It is a shame that Apple is supporting Bento as it affords no useful purpose. People, even Mom and Pop want and can use a RELATIONAL database. To ask people to shell out 50 bucks for a static database, and then 4 bucks for a database that is completely useless on the iPhone is a smack in the face to the public.
If I were Steve Jobs I would be really embarrassed about this program. Consider buying HandBase. They actually have a clue. Their new iPhone layout is unbelievable. They now have a graphical first page with cabinets and the new color coding system makes it much easier to create and enter data. Add to that it’s ability to read from other databases and this is hands down the best program of all for iPhone Database functionality.
@ deepdish: FMPro integration
Completely with you on this issue. Been asking for this from the moment Bento came out.
If FileMaker Pro is designed to front end an SQL database, why can’t Bento be designed to front end a FileMaker database?
I bought the Bento family pack, but foolishly did not check if it does labels. It doesn’t, so sits unused. Too crippled for my use.
I bought two copies of Bento, one for my wife’s databases, Pantry & Freezers, which she can access from her iPhone, and one for my Wine Cellar database which I can access from my iPhone.
This works really well for both of us, but you do need separate copies of Bento (one on a mini and one on an iMac) because each copy can only support one mobile device registered at a time.
So………… Bento for iPhone should IMO be used to access a main DB on a host machine.
why on earth would you subject you or your wife to this useless program? Why not buy Filemaker or Microsoft Access and as the user above noted purchase HandBase?
Cannot help but agree Bento is completely useless.
@@johncrawford
I’m not sure you want to know the reasons “why on earth would I subject” my wife or myself to “this useless program” as you appear to be on a hate campaign against Bento.
But here goes! I wanted to be able to choose from my wine inventory using my phone on the 1st Floor (Ground in the UK), go down to my cellar to withdraw the chosen wine(s) and update the inventory there and then. With Bento for iPhone I can do all this without climbing to my study on the 3rd floor (2nd floor in the UK).
My wife can do the same with her 3 main freezers, 2 of which are in the cellar, checking contents for shopping lists and updating her inventories there and then on her iPhone.
As a user of FileMakerPro and a one-time user of 4D, I was looking for a simple and quick implementation. A relational DB was just overkill IMO, and as far as I can see FileMaker does not support the iPhone in the same simple and elegant way as Bento.
Far from being a “useless” application, both of us have found it very useful and easy. Horses for courses. By the way, I will look at HandBase for future uses.
John,
I hold my case and have no regrets in saying that Bento is useless. However, I concede to you that you are probably the first and only person I have ever met that has found this debacle to be useful.
I love my Mac, iPhone and I really love Mac software, but this is just the worst. It is elegant in design and has no teeth. Again, i am happy that you have found it to be useful.
Personally, for what you are doing it may be okay. I would have opted for a Windows solution (yes, I did say that bad word), namely, Microsoft Access and then used HandBase as the database. Handbase also works well with SQL so anything from that genre that is on the Mac would also suffice. The downside to Handbase is that it has to be ported to another program on the mac that has a database or to an excel file. It is probably not as straightforward (or, dare I admit elegant) as the Bento solution.
Again, not starting a flame war, just being honest about one of the worst debacles in software that I have seen in a long time. Again, I am a long time Mac user and with the exception of Access, I usually stay well away from Windows. But I have yet to find a very good Mac relational database with the exception of Filemaker (which I also hate by the way). Have a good one John. I’ll try not to be so judgmental next time.
….from the first floor
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Bento is relational but not in way Filemaker jockeys would always like.
I do think that Bento on iPhone needs to be reviewed by the Steve-inator. As for regular Bento…. ahhh, it continues to be developed. I can’t say anymore.
Still useless
I have tried and it’s just useless
Deepdish here.
I deserve all your criticism about my boneheaded typos.
My point remains the same.
There needs to be a client based way for fmp to be used by the end user who will never design databases, they will only be accesses the fmp databases being hosted elsewhere.
(wow, now I am paranoid about my typing, yikes)
And I will do future humorous and embarrassing typos too.
@deepdish, totally agree. We used FMP to manage projects at our company of about 10. The 2 project managers could use it, but it would have been nice to let the other 8 prople enter billable hours and expenses into the system. We weren’t going to buy everyone FMP just to do that.
Ended up ditching the whole thing for a web-based system we built for ourselves.
Running a database on a client computer seems old fashioned.
Bento is pretty much eye-candy. When Claris decided not to bring the functionality of Appleworks to OSX, they declared their end of life. They are now coasting to oblivion. They could use a strong dose of reality, that is, there is a huge middle ground user-base that wants more than the hidden file system and eye candy of Bento and the iLife apps, but isn’t ever going to FMP or Photoshop or other pro-level apps. We thirst.
I remember when Bento first was being pushed by Apple/Filemaker. The ad copy for it was a masterful collection of impressive verbiage and glowing admiration … Unfortunately there was little explanation as to it’s real world function.
So I figured I’d wait. Eventually there would be a review that would be more informative, right? When the reviews began coming out, it was wierd how I always seemed to find positive ratings for Bento (“Thumbs Up”, “Four Stars”), but after actually reading them I was no clearer on what it could actually do for me.
I started to think I must not be ‘getting it’. This thing must have some purpose that was escaping me and my ‘not-techie-enough’ life. I took heart from experience – eventually I’d figure it out, and then I’d be able to see how the puzzle pieces fit.
How many years are we on now? I forget. Bento still makes no sense to me and my measured above average IQ though. And hence the life lesson:
If something can’t be clearly and concisely explained, without flowery adspeak mucking up the copy or commercial, right from the start, it probably isn’t worth a damn. And without a thorough reworking, I have to assume Bento will be in that catagory till the end of it’s days.
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MDN Magic Word = theres
As in, “With Bento, there’s no there there.”
Bento is awesome. I don’t get all the hating on Bento here. Much like the Mac is to Windows, Bento is to other databases- simpler and more elegant. You will have to unlearn some of what you’ve learned in order to ‘get’ Bento.
Someone said that Bento doesn’t print labels. That’s true. You print labels from Address Book.
Someone else said that Bento is useless on the iPhone. I couldn’t disagree more. I love using Bento on my iPhone.
Someone else said it is useless. Rubbish. I use it all the time and it is very useful. I use it to do customer invoicing. I use it to store snippets of information that I want to have synced between my Mac and my iPhone. I even used it to run an election for a club that I’m a member of, complete with ballots that had unique serial numbers on them generated by Bento’s calculation fields.
It’s one thing to say that you don’t like a program, but, you seem idiotic when you claim that a program is useless or just eye candy when you clearly weren’t keen enough to grok how to use it effectively.
“For those whom God to ruin has design’d, He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind.”
John Dryden
Ooops, wrong thread, this should appear in “Microsoft Secret project “Menlo”
Guys have you tried Database viewer Plus form cellica, its just awesome. And forsttime the real form on iPhone and iPad. Has relational capability too.. bye bye Bento.. ( Wireless syncing from anywhere in the world not just wifi blow away handbase and bento from competition with this lovely piece of application)