Here’s something I found out the hard way.

If you use Bento for Mac and iPhone, deleting a database on the iPhone will also delete the master database on the Mac on the next sync.

Let me type that again, because I still can’t believe it.

If you delete a Bento database on the iPhone, on the next sync, the master database on the Mac, the one with all the critical information you’ve been building up, will be completely erased.

No warning. No confirmation. No temp file hiding in the library. Nothing in the trash to recover. The database is gone. Wiped out. Nuked from orbit. Buh-bye.

Deleting a master database from a field device should take confirmation, a second password confirmation, re-re-confirmation, and the last two addresses you’ve lived at. For a database program to allow an immediate nuke without any prompt? That’s beyond unacceptable.

Filemaker knows about this issue (here and here), but their response has always been “ah, just restore from weekly backup”.

Ah, no. Hell no. This is a crippling “should have never got out of beta” design flaw.

Zero-star rating for Bento. Don’t ever use this app.