(Updated) Bento 4 for iPad: One step forward, five steps back.

One step forward:

Table view finally makes an appearance with multi-field sorting; can still work independently of Bento for Mac; since you can’t really edit the themes it’s good that there are more available; apparently iPad 3 retina support is baked in; decent low cost upgrade…

Four Five steps back:

For an Apple subsidiary (FileMaker) iCloud should be mandatory, yet it’s clearly missing. Bento 4 for iPad also can’t interact with device contacts and calendars, or utilize iCloud contacts or calendars. This is a major omission and an out right ridiculous removal of previously available data. We are now in a cloud world, and removing access to previously available data is just stupid. Face it, contacts and calendars do not remain static, they are inherently dynamic and should be accessible by Bento 4 for iPad via Apple’s iCloud.

When I look at Bento 4 for iPad, I don’t see the “pretty new interface”. I see lots of ugly. The first thing that caught my eye were the database aka “library” icons. These sudo 3D looking icons are terrible looking. I like the old icons (more 2D but still had some depth) that we still have in Bento for Mac and iPhone. I don’t care about the large icons you see when you create a new “Library” (you rarely see those larger ones)… but the small ones on the left under the Libraries list should be the same as Bento for the Mac. Revert back to the basic icons, don’t bring these ugly icons to Bento for Mac. I kid you not, these icons look like something Microsoft would make. Yuck.

Also along the lines of the user interface… I created my databases on Bento for Mac, you know the full, original, computer version – which has access to a LARGER screen. It’s a “cool” (and much needed) feature for Bento 4 for iPad to copy/show my form views, but I have to constantly scroll left/right to see data (and god forbid that I want to be in portrait view). I really didn’t mind scrolling up/down in the previous version. I’m sorry – I’m not going to redesign my form views so that I can easily access my data on my iPad, and then be crippled on my desktop version. That’s just backwards thinking.

“Automatic Counter Field” from Bento for Mac is still missing for iPad. However in form view it now shows up with a message inside it: “This field type is not supported on iPad”. Really? What gives? This is a fundamental database feature. It’s basically like a unique ID number. Each time a new record is added, the field increases by a set “increment”. How difficult is that? The data never changes, it’s a locked field after the record is created. Previous Bento versions for iPad just hid this “serious offender” from view.

Updated: Fifth step back…

There is a fundamental flaw in GUI when modifying the form view… Since a side bar appears when editing, it’s nearly impossible to design a form layout that fully utilizes the full width available for the form view. The GUI for adding new items etc (the current side bar) should have been added below the form view, allowing users a full width canvas to work with, which would only involve up/down scrolling, as it’s currently designed, users are forced to up/down and left/right scrolling when modifying their form views. EPIC FAIL FileMaker.

Not far enough “from the ground up”…

Where is the action button? The one that lets do more with your data, like: sending email of a single record (csv, pdf, txt, etc), or the ability to print a single record (you know iOS supports printing right?), or how about saving as a PDF and being able to do other things with it – like export to PDFPen for iPad?

Also, the syncing borked with my Mac. Still can’t get it to sync. I guess I’ll have to start a new sync and see if that works.

Spooky import of previous Bento data…

I thought there was some serious protection of data between iOS apps. Yes I had to confirm in the old version of Bento, but the fact that it was able to grab on to my old data and copy it over to the new app was a little spooky. Can other apps do this without a prompt? Or as an Apple subsidiary, is FileMaker using some private Apple voodoo?