Let me repeat the most recent issue:
Before you migrate from Mobile Me to iCloud or otherwise turn on on iCloud,
do this:
Make sure you have Bento 4.06
Launch it.
Quit Bento.

After that, you should be ready to surf the new Clouds.

Since Mobile Me will be available until June 30, 2012, I personally am not in a hurry to get OSX Lion and iCloud. But since there are very few issues which have been reported in the Bento forums, I have to assume that Bento is generally ready for the transition. That doesn’t mean that the problems reported here on BentoUsers are not real. But they are not the norm, but rather horrible bad luck.
Still, let’s all keep our eyes and ears open…

TS Gal, the main tech person on the Bento forum, confirmed that we have an unsolved problem. Here’s a direct quote (response to user report):
“I am able to replicate the problem (=frequent crashes) under Bento 4.0.4 and Lion, as it works properly under Bento 4.0.4 and Snow Leopard. During the time the beach ball was spinning, I ran Activity Monitor and captured a sample. I sent this file along with your data file to our Development and Testing departments for review…” So now we wait.

Simple recommendation:
If you haven’t adopted Lion yet, hold off until Bento 4.0.5 is released.

P.S.: BTW, I had failed to report that Bento 4.0.4 under Snow Leopard seems to be more stable than 4.0.3 – I don’t experience any more crashes.

With Bento 4.0.2, I had absolutely no crashes, and I worked with it extensively almost daily. But 4.0.3 quit unexpectedly several times. And the strange thing is that it quits over night, while I’m not working on it at all. That same problem existed with an earlier version of Bento, but had been fixed. Now it’s back!
There are no indications that the datafile gets corrupted, thank God. Bento always works fine after I reopen it. And I used two independent datafiles: both trigger overnight crashes, but both work fine afterwards. And Bento 4.0.3 hasn’t crashed on me while I’m working on a database. Only while I’m actually sleeping…

Sorry Bento 4.0.3, but you’re not a sleeping beauty!

I can only hope that the next update comes soon and that it will fix this problem!!

Additional observation: at least Bento has learned to bow out gracefully. When the buggy 4.0.1 version crashed it didn’t even quit. Now the program quits and the little pop-up even has a “reopen” button. Nice. Thanks, Filemaker, Inc., that you gave Bento 4.0.3 a nice funeral. It still counts as an improvement.

You are taking great care designing a form that looks great on your particular screen – be it a 13″ Macbook or a 27″ iMac. Then, big disappointment: the printout looks horrible. Why? Because Bento automatically squeezes any screen layout into whatever paper size is selected in the print dialog, therefore often making text sizes much smaller. In most cases that kind of printout is frustrating and not usable at all!

Bento needs page guides that should fetch the current print settings. It should be possible to switch them on and off.

Dear Filemaker: Thanks for listening.

Let’s face it: The Bento List Fields are pretty ugly, but they are even uglier with scroll bars. Whenever possible I am trying to avoid them.

The Simple List field contains a bug (or to put it nicely: an oversight) that makes avoiding horizontal scroll bars very hard:
The rightmost column is always called “new column.” It’s very unsightly because it’s like constantly displaying the edit-mode. Even though you can re-size it like the other columns (making the words disappear), Bento does not remember the new column size! It always expands back to the full size if you click on a different form and then go back. Only the sizes of the active columns are remembered.
This also falls into the category “Unexpected Results,” because first Bento let’s us resize the column, then later just ignores that action and reverses it!
Dear Filemaker: please fix this or at least tell us that you won’t. If you never address these valid concerns you are giving us the impression that you simply don’t care. Bento is branded as a database designer’s dream. Unsightly problems like these spell trouble in paradise!

Another Simple List field bug – same Category: unexpected results.
You can copy data and paste them into a Simple List field. But even though the Simple List field looks and feels exactly like Bento’s Table View, it acts differently all of a sudden:
You can not paste into multiple columns, and first you have to create the correct number of empty cells before you can paste anything!
In Table View on the other hand, you can simply click into the last row (the one with the “+”) and paste muliple columns!
Dear Filemaker: please fix this. Thanks.

Next issue – Category: missing basic feature.
For a while now, Smart Collections can also be used as Related Data fields which is very useful. But they still won’t be filled automatically with records to match the functionality of the Smart Collections. This feature is so logical that I really don’t understand that it hasn’t been implemented yet.

Finally, I really wish the option of creating a one-line Related Data field would be re-implemented, therefore eliminating the need for an ugly List field in many situations.
Dear Filemaker: why did you not reconsider this yet? The initial design of this feature had so much promise, and many users had requested it.

Patrick, one of our BentoUsers contributor had told me yesterday about the world-wide Bento 4 crashes which were piling up in the forums, so it was only a matter of time until it reached me as well. Now it did.

Two things would be real nice: to fix the actual crash routine which never worked correctly; at least bow out gracefully, Bento 4! Second, a faster fix than with Bento 3. Good luck, Filemaker, Inc.

This does not replace the private Contact Form. But anything you want to share with other Bento Users should go here.

If an issue comes up that fits into another category I will create a post over there where we can expand on it even further.

Have fun and don’t hesitate to discuss any Bento issue you like.