I was browsing apps on the Mac AppStore and was surprised to find that the database application Bento was not there. On checking, it was withdrawn from sale in September 2013, with support only being promised until July 2014.
For those unfamiliar with Bento, it was launched in 2008, seems like yesterday, but then I am old and dottled and pretty much everything seems like yesterday. It was presented as a database for normal people, and came out with much hurrah. Initial impressions were favourable, it hooked into your contacts etc, with ease, and was pleasant to look at. However a series of paid upgrades that seemed to offer little additional functionality, and the constraints of using a database as much of anything beyond just a computerised set of file cards, gradually wore away the initial goodwill. Its passing will be lamented by a few who have invested a lot of time and effort into their personal databases, but for most people it won’t be much missed.
For long time Mac users there has never been a great demand for, or great number of database applications. Way back when, there was HyperCard, which was not really a database, but did stuff, then there were the works packages, AppleWorks and later ClarisWorks (for both 1984-2004) which included a database application. Oddly for modern eyes they also included a terminal programme for communicating via the new fangled inter web! With the demise of Clarisworks, and the shift to the iWorks package, there was no longer a go to database for ordinary Mac users.
Elsewhere there is much coverage of the decline and fall of the relational database, http://www.itworld.com/storage/86308/the-decline-and-fall-relational-database
To be honest, I often find myself trying to explain to normal people what a database is. They generally look deadly bored, while I attempt to explain why Excel is actually inferior to a database for certain tasks. But for most people, they understand what Excel is, and can get it to do what they want, anything else is either a bespoke application or website and does what it does. So IMDB, the App Store, iTunes, are not a database, they are just part of the landscape. Similarly you would not expect to cobble together something like iTunes yourself, you would look for something that provided the functionality for you.
So good bye then to Bento the personal database, gone the same way as Works packages, and terminal programmes for accessing the inter web.
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