Forum post
In the two weeks I've been trying to use Bento, I've had to Force Quit it 40-50 times. My one Bento database is linked to a group of 200 business contacts on my Address Book. I use iCloud to sync Address Book and iCal between my MacBook Pro and iPhone 4. I know that iCloud syncing can slow down Bento, but, in my case, it may be causing it to crash. I've read over 100 posts about similar problems on this forum, but following the advise people offered hasn't stopped the spinning beach ball. All my software is up-to-date.
The fellow I spoke to Bento tech support on Friday told me to reinstall Bento. He said I should simply move Bento to the trash and reinstall it—and not worry about removing the Bento plist and other ancillary parts of Bento on my hard disk. Was he right? I'm still getting the spinning beach ball after the reinstall. Today it occurred when I added a new field to one of my forms that is unrelated to any field in Address Book. Bento sometimes stops responding when I reboot my computer, and it's the only program running.
I've considered stopping syncing with iCloud when I use Bento, but I had an awful time setting up iCloud syncing in the first place: all my contacts were duplicated, and merging duplicates resulted in duplicate address fields and notes in most of my contacts. It took several days to clean up my Contacts. Now that my Contacts are back to normal and syncing properly, I worry that if I turn off iCloud syncing on my Mac when I'm working with Bento, and then turn it back I'm done, iCloud will once again duplicate all my contacts again, and thus waste several more days of my life fixing them.
Alternatively, I could simply stop syncing between Bento and Address Book (but keep syncing my Mac and iPhone via iCloud). Or I could quit iCloud syncing altogether, and go back to syncing via iTunes.
My questions are:
Does anyone know what might be causing Bento to cease responding (I wait five minutes for the spinning beach ball of death to stop spinning before doing a Force Quit)? Is syncing my Address Book via iCloud the likely culpit?
Any recommendations on stopping or temporarily suspending iCloud syncing when working with Bento? And might I duplicate my contacts if I turn iCloud off and on again?
Any other advice? (BYW, I JUST upgraded to 6.0.7 but haven't tested it yet. From its description, it doesn't seem like it will fix my problem.)
Thanks, Jon
Answer
Hi Jonathan,
I had a similar issue and no amount of trouble shooting with Bento techs made it go away. Finally I had to disable the link with Bento and iCal, and that fixed the hanging mostly. It doesn't solve my problem becuase I need them to integrate, however I have resigned to wait on FM fixing the bug. We are certainly not the only ones having the problem.
Go to File/Address Book, iPhoto and iCal set up and untick ical. Save, Then retsart Bento. It will not remove your data, it simply stops Bento from looking for it.
This will still allow you to use icloud for everything outside Bento and will still allow Bento to access your address book.
The problem mainly is associated with icloud use of ical because the data is not stored locally and Bento is trying to look locally for the info (so I was told).
What a pity this awesome potential for the software is being overlooked!
Let me know if the update fixes the problem.
Average Rating:
100% (+1/-0)
|
Sign in to rate this
Jonathan,
I'm having the same problem. I just got off the phone with a Bento support tech who lectured me about how "we didn't test Bento with iCloud" and said they shouldn't be expected to support an Address Book that syncs with iCloud because "we have no control over iCloud." Huh? How can Bento claim to be integrated with Address Book at all if it doesn't work with an Address Book that syncs with iCloud? This tech further told me that I would have to pay them $45 to troubleshoot this. So they want me to pay them to debug their software. Heck, they should pay me to debug their software! It's hard to believe they don't test their software with iCloud since iCloud is such an important part of the Mac ecosystem.
Anyway, the message coming from FileMaker is that iCloud isn't supported and if we don't like it then we can just go pound dirt. Heck of a way to treat your customers if you ask me. I invite a rep from FileMaker to correct this perception if you're wiling to talk about it. Just tell us that you acknowledge that it's a bug in the Bento software, and you plan to fix it soon, and tell us when you're going to fix it. Continued silence or unwillingness to provide information about the fix will continue to be interpreted by the user community as I have above. In which case I'll dump Bento, demand a refund, and go find another solution for my application.
Given how competitive the software business is and how hard it is to garner goodwill and loyalty with a customer base, it's hard to understand how a vendor can so callously disregard its paying customers. It's simply bad business.
Phil
Be the first to rate this
|
Sign in to rate this
Bento has an notice about settings things up right if using iCloud. The link is
http://forums.filemaker.com/posts/2d60e7bd56
This may be helpful
Be the first to rate this
|
Sign in to rate this
This is Jonathan again. Thank you Summer, Phil, and pvonk for responding to my post.
Unfortunately, breaking the link between Bento and iCal, as Summer advised, didn't stop the spinning beach balls while I was still syncing Address Book and iCal to iCloud. And thanks for posting the link, pvonk, about the steps one should take with Bento before syncing with iCloud. I called Bento tech support about these steps before installing Bento (I had already upgraded to Snow Leopard and was syncing with iCloud) and was told by a Bento tech that "All incompatibility issues with iCloud have been resolved" since the Bento team posted this warning on 2011-11-20.
In a nutshell, here's "the fix" that worked for me. I use Bento for one group of contacts in my Address Book—my business contacts are my only Bento database. To stop the spinning beach balls from appearing, I had to cease syncing my Mac's and my iPhone's contacts and calendars with iCloud. That's the only thing that worked. I spent entire days trying other fixes recommended by Bento techs and contributors to this forum. Nothing solved the problem until I untethered my Mac (and iPhone) from iCloud and went back to manually syncing my contacts and calendars between my Mac and iPhone with iTunes.
Though the Bento team spent a lot of time trying to solve my spinning beach ball problems—and they're one of the few support teams to resolve questions on their users forum—I feel they mislead me when they told me some Bento users experience "slow performance" with Bento when someone syncs their Address Book and iCal to iCloud. I doubt that I'm one of but a few Bento users who had to Force Quit Bento ten or more times a day because Bento quit responding. I really wish someone on Bento's tech support team had simply told me to stop syncing with iCloud (and to return to syncing with iTunes).
I tried numerous "fixes." I trashed Bento and downloaded a new version. I trashed the Bento plist. I saved all my contacts and calendars to the desktop, trashed their plists and caches—and I still got the spinning beach balls. Luckily a Bento tech warned me against turning off "Display Address Book data in Bento" (File > Address Book, iCal, iPhoto setup") because doing so would delete all my contacts in Address Book.
I suspected that one of my third party apps was causing the problem. I use the text-expanding program Typinator, LaunchBar, Grammarian, and several others. But through trial and error I discovered that spinning beach balls only appear when I changed a Bento field linked to my Address Book (for example, Note or Email Address) or iCal (Event or Task), but not Bento fields I created that weren't linked to Address Book or iCal.
A Bento tech finally conceded that "there are lot of issues between Bento and syncing contacts and calendars to iCloud"—and recommended I stop iCloud syncing. I again exported all my contact groups and calendars to my desktop and stopped iCloud sync. When I imported my contacts and calendars back to Address Book and iCal, the spinning beach balls nearly disappeared but the tasks I entered in Bento weren't showing up in iCal. Though safe booting (hold Shift key when restarting computer) didn't correct the problem, logging in as a Test User did resolve it. So the Bento tech said to call Apple Care and get to a Senior Advisor to guide me through a Manual Migration to create a new user account from myself. The Apple Senior Advisor told me that a Manual Migration won't fix the problem. But he advised me to move my calendars to the Desktop, clear out my iCal plists and caches, then restart my computer to install a fresh version of iCal. Once I deleted all my old calendar events dating back a decade and linked to calendars I no longer used, it fixed the problem— everything linked between Bento and iCal (events and tasks) as well as Address Book.
In conclusion, I use Bento to log information about and keep track of my interactions with prospects and clients for my business. It now works great. My Bento contacts comprise a large group of contacts in my Address Book. Bento is a simple yet powerful program that meets my needs. I just wish the Bento team told me earlier to stop syncing with iCloud rather than keeping to, at least in my case, the misleading line that one "may experience performance issues" with Bento if one syncs via iCloud.
I had previously bought, set up, and started using Marketplace's Daylite for the same purpose. It's a more sophisticated, complex, and expensive program than Bento. Daylite is a fully integrated Customer Relationship Management program. It's much more complicated to set up and use than Bento. And it suffers from similar but even worse problems with iCloud syncing, so I gave up on Daylite and started using Bento.
If you frequently have to Force Quit Bento because the beach balls keep spinning for more than a few minutes, decide what's more important to you—using Bento or syncing via iCloud. In my case, I decided to keep Bento and go back to syncing via iTunes—and I had to do so carefully to avoid duplicating my contacts, and calendar events and tasks.
Good day and good luck, Jonathan
Be the first to rate this
|
Sign in to rate this
Jonathan and others:
Yesterday I had a long chat with a senior support person at FM about this issue. First of all, there is no clear message from FileMaker about this issue. A lot of hemming and hawing and prevarication, various suggestions, etc. The bottom line is, it doesn't work. I urged them to be clear with their users about this. The right thing for them to do would be to just come out and tell the truth. In the absence of them doing it, I'll write the support article for them:
"Dear Bento users, Bento will not integrate with your Mac Address Book if you sync your Address Book with iCloud. If you attempt to use it in this way, you will experience various problems. You Bento application will frequently freeze, requiring a Force Stop. Data will not synchronize properly between Bento and Address Book. There are so many problems with this, we don't even know all of them. We're very sorry for the problem. We released Bento 4 before iCloud was available. We never tested it with iCloud. We now know that it simply doesn't support iCloud-synchronized data. THEREFORE WE CAN CLEARLY STATE THAT YOU SHOULD NOT USE BENTO WITH ICLOUD-SYNCED DATA ON YOUR MAC. If you attempt to do so, we cannot be responsible for the results, and you will probably lose some or all of your valuable data. We know this is a terrible problem for many of you. We are working hard to fix it. While Sarbanes-Oxley law prevents us from providing a projected date when this problem will be solved, please rest assured that it has the very highest priority within our development team. We realize that iCloud is an essential part of the Mac ecosystem. Our goal is to provide complete and robust support for iCloud. With each new release of Bento, we will work hard to make this goal a reality."
Of course I've editorialized somewhat, but this is what we'd all like to hear from FileMaker at this stage. Let's see whether they'll do the right thing and make a statement that is substantially similar to this.
-Phil
Be the first to rate this
|
Sign in to rate this
I have absolutely no problems with Bento using the Apple address book which syncs with iCloud (and with my iPad Bento where the iPad also syncs with icloud, as does my iPhone), so the suggestion from "tech support" to not use Bento with icloud synced data is not valid, since Bento does work well for many users in this forum.
As I posted above, when iCloud came out, there were some users who experienced problems and tech support provided some responses. Then Bento posted the warning about preparing for iCloud (my link is in my last post above). Whatever the problem is, it is not universal and seems to affect only some users.
Unfortunately, it seems tech support has not been active in this forum for several weeks - unusual, considering it participated every day, providing responses to user problems. Several of us long-timers have posted regarding this change in service and we do wonder what's up.
Be the first to rate this
|
Sign in to rate this
Yes, pvonk, there are some reports of users such as yourself who are able to make it work. Unfortunately, no one can document the exact steps needed to make it work. An alternative tech note from FM support would be to definitively state the steps to make it work. But instead all we have is various suggestions of things to try, and no promise of success. I don't think they understand the problem well enough to tell us how to reliably get it to work. In the absence of this, the only practical conclusion for most users is that it usually doesn't work, isn't supported, and you shouldn't try it.
This is a case where the product managers and support staff simply need to do a better job communicating with customers. They need to be clear about what is supported and what isn't, and for the features that are supported, clearly and definitively tell us how to make it work. For features that aren't supported, clearly state that. But don't leave us in limbo or ask us to waste a lot of time trying something that may or may not work, and about which they have little real understanding.
-Phil
Be the first to rate this
|
Sign in to rate this
Jonathan Reed, Summer Nelson, and Phil Russell:
Thank you for your posts, and I apologize for the late reply.
Address Book and iCal syncing with iCloud was tested thoroughly with Bento. If a change is made to the Adress Book Library, then that information is written to the Address Book Library, and then at some time (a few seconds later to a few hours later), the information is copied to the iCloud server, and at that point, there may be a delay (generally a couple of seconds) in Bento. The same would occur with iCal changes (if iCal is set to sync with iCloud).
In Address Book, you click Edit to make changes, and the changes are not recorded until you click "Done". In Bento, as soon as you exit a field with any changes, that information is sent via an applicaton programming interface provided by Apple that writes the information to the Address Book application. iCloud eventually notices the change, and then copies the data to the iCloud server. Being more specific, if you make changes to eight fields in the Address Book application and click "Done", then those changes are recorded. If you make changes to eight fields in the Address Book Library, then there would be eight separate changes recorded in the Address Book application, so depending when the iCloud server reacts, you could have multiple requests to copy the information, and this would slow down input.
iCloud allows you to keep the same data on each of your devices (Mac and iOS). However, some users confuse syncing with multi-user, and assume multiiple users can use the same Address Book or iCal information simultaneously. This isn't what iCloud was designed for (like any syncing service), as this would definitely cause issues as information would be downloaded many times to the local computer, and if Address Book or iCal information was updated, that information would be sent to Bento, and Bento processing would temporarily pause (beach ball) while that information is updated.
Besides iCloud allowing you to keep one set of data on a server, you do have the ability to keep a totally separate set of information on your Mac. That is the reason why "Jonathan Reed" saw duplicate records in Address Book. There were probably records "On My Mac" as well as iCloud.
It is true that we have no control over iCloud. We send the information to the Address Book and iCal applications. iCloud decides when to copy the data, and we have no control over that.
The other applications that "jonathan Reed" mentioned (Typinator, LaunchBar, Grammarian, etc.) would have no effect how Bento performs.
"Phil Russell" - the statement is false. If you are crashing, then there may be an issue with your database file, and I'd like to see it. Check your Inbox at the top of this page for instructions where to send the file.
TSGal
FileMaker, Inc.
Be the first to rate this
|
Sign in to rate this
TSGal,
The statement is NOT false. The minute I turned off iCloud syncing, everything stabilized and worked as it should. No more freeze-ups, crashes, or un-synced data between Bento and Address Book. And yes, I always use Address Book as a single user app, not in the multi-user manner you describe.
Whether you intend to or not, you're blowing smoke. Bento has clearly not been tested with Address Book/iCloud syncing sufficiently or in a real-world environment. The application issues are real and are easily re-produceable. You guys might believe that it should work in theory, but in actual use the results are very unpredictable.
I suggest you thoroughly test it before the next release, get the bugs out, apologize to your users for messing up, and then ship a stable release. Spin and propaganda will not solve this problem, but doing the right thing and fixing the software will!
Phil
Be the first to rate this
|
Sign in to rate this
Phil Russell:
I have 440 records in my Address Book that I sync through iCloud (since I want to keep my iPod touch, iPad, and iPhone with consistent data). I'm running Bento 4.0.7 under Mac OS X 10.7.4. I do get an occasional beach ball after Address Book records are updated, but no crashes nor freeze ups. Since another user on this thread (pvonk) is not having issues, perhaps you could provide more information about your particular computing environment since the crashing and freeze-ups may be attributed to something else. That is, how many records do you have in Address Book? Are these all in iCloud or do you have some on the Mac? How many groups do you have in Address Book? Are these all in iCloud or are they on your Mac? Did you create any additional fields in the Address Book or iCal Libraries? Any other information may be helpful.
TSGal
FileMaker, Inc.
Be the first to rate this
|
Sign in to rate this