Helpful Harry Posted May 10, 2014 Share Posted May 10, 2014 For those needing to find something to replace Bento, the March 2014 issue of the UK's MacFormat magazine did a Group Test of some possible options and came up with these final results ... Tap Forms - 4 stars (out of 5) - MacFormat Winner! Panorama Sheets - 4 stars FileMaker Pro 13 - 3 stars Numbers - 3 stars iDatabase - 2 stars Symphytum - 2 stars Although picking a winner will always be subjective, for a straight Bento replacement, Tap Forms is the clear winner by a mile. The user interface is beautifully Mac-like, the structuring of data is similar enough to Bento that it offers only a shallow learning curve, it offers a direct import of Bento templates, and the iOS companion app is great. An honourable mention should also go to Panorama Sheets. At first galnce, it's the anti-Bento; no forms, and only three field types. But for those who spend their days cleaning up text data, maintaining postal mailing lists, the rich functionality under the hood gives products ten times its price a run for their money. Yes, we're looking at you, FileMaker. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Whitelaw Posted May 11, 2014 Share Posted May 11, 2014 I'm not surprised FMP 13 doesn't top the list. It's an apples and oranges situation. FMP is not the same type of product as Bento. I'm not familiar with the other products in the list. Although FMP has a steep learning curve its capabilities make it a great product. Of course, if all you want is a contact list or a recipe book then FMP might be overkill. The issue is what does a user need. An advantage of using FileMaker is that, should your needs change and get more complex, FileMaker will be able to handle those needs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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