[dfs]

I think it boils down to this, Jason. I can't help noticing that both you and Chris Breen are being very careful not to respond to my original point that on the MW website Bento (by which I assume you mean FileMaker, its developer) is identified as a "Partner", which at least to the uninstructed reader manages to suggest a considerably closer, and just possibly cozier, corporate relationship than the usual advertiser-publisher one, so that your assurances that there is a firewall between MW's editorial and advertising departments don't completely cover the present situation. I still think that good journalistic ethics require that reviews should be candid about the existence of any special corporate relationships, and that running reviews of products by "partners" MW appears to require a special editorial policy with extraordinary precautions in place. It might help put your readers' minds at ease if MW would spell out exactly what these "partnerships" are all about.

[Chris Breen]

dfs said:

>I can't help noticing that both you and Chris Breen are being very careful not to respond to my original point that on the MW website Bento (by which I assume you mean FileMaker, its developer) is identified as a "Partner", which at least to the uninstructed reader manages to suggest a considerably closer, and just possibly cozier, corporate relationship than the usual advertiser-publisher one, so that your assurances that there is a firewall between MW's editorial and advertising departments don't completely cover the present situation.

And this is exactly the kind of "when did you stop beating your wife" reply we're reacting to.

Both Jason and I have said that there is no influence. Yet, again, we face this unfounded accusation along with the suggestion that we begin each of these "partner" reviews with:

"Dear reader, honestly, we don't beat our wives."

because, apparently, our reply that we don't beat our wives just adds fuel to your suspicions.

Again -- and I'll put this as un-carefully as I can -- you're talking through your tinfoil hat.

[dfs]

Sorry, Chris, it's you who don't get it, and all this verbal garbage about wife-beating only serves to conceal the essential point. All that is needed is the following boilerplate notice at the beginning of any review of a "partner's" product: "The reader should be advised that XXX is a corporate partner of MacWorld (or MacWorld's corporate parent, as the case may be)". Then, when he has received fair warning, the reader can make up his own mind about what weight (if any) to place on this special situation. When you get down to it, this form of disclosure is the right thing to do.

[Azurite]

I agree with DFS on the point that a disclaimer of sorts should prefix a review of any product that is partnered in anyway with MacWorld. This is not to disclaim the possibility of suspicion-- but the suspicion will already be there, even without such a disclaimer in place. I can say this as a member of the journalism community and as a reader of MacWorld. If I'm reading through the magazine and I see an ad for Product XYZ, I know that Product XYZ's makers have paid the advertising department of MacWorld to have their product in a highly-read magazine. I also know that the editorial department likely doesn't know anything about which companies are supplying their advertising; as the MacWorld staffers have mentioned, editorial and ad space are kept wholly separate: it's merely a matter of knowing how many inches of space you've got for an article, and the rest is sold off as usable ad-space (at least that's how it is for me; I'm not pretending to know exactly how it works at MW). Usually the ad people at a magazine or other publication are smart enough not to put an ad for XYZ right underneath a review for XYZ.

HOWEVER, in the case of a review for a product, I think it's the ad department's responsibility to inform the editorial department that Product XYZ's makers have expressed an interest in partnering with MacWorld and advertising. Maybe they've BEEN an advertising partner for all this time, but again, the editorial department isn't always aware of the full list of advertisers, their products, or whether they're taking out full-size pages in the front of the magazine or business-card size ads in the back. In that case, the editorial department should check before making a review.

The reason for the disclaimer is so that someone flipping through the magazine (or browsing online, even) doesn't see an ad from Product XYZ's makers and then click/flip the page to see a glowing review of Product XYZ and go "Hmm, that's suspicious." Because that's the gut reaction most people will have. The disclaimer exists to allay suspicions they'll develop on their own, not ones that will be brought up as a result of the disclaimer's existence in the first place.

On the one hand, when I saw FileMaker/Bento listed as a MacWorld partner on the site, I thought "Well, at least they're being upfront about it," because I already knew about the Bento 2 review and the discussion going on about the review and how it didn't mention any of the userbase's concerns (e.g. upgrade price, lack of a number of quality/new features, etc.) That's because I came to MacWorld.com and the first thing I did was look for the Bento review in the search bar. I didn't look for ads, I didn't check and see if FileMaker was a partner or advertiser with MacWorld. Other people might not have (or have had) that same attitude. So, on the other hand, it's right to link to the review as from 'our partner' because that lets people who click through there know that the review is done for a product that does have advertising deals with the magazine. That's a disclaimer in and of itself. But it's not a complete one, and it doesn't necessarily assuage people of the commonly-held fear by folks outside the industry that the advertising people have no sway over the editorial copy, its placement, etc. And people might still find the review other ways, and wonder about MacWorld's relationship with FileMaker, for so many people in the forums to wonder why the review doesn't address the issues they deal with. It could be for any number of reasons, of course, including that they didn't get the new version on time to do a preliminary review, prior to the public release, or that they didn't have enough time to do an indepth review covering EVERYTHING the users of Bento v1 have been complaining about (prior to Bento v2's release or not). The idea that MacWorld might produce a glowing review for Bento 2 and not address "the issues" is raised merely as a possibility -something that people thought about- but not necessarily hard fact or something that the majority of readers believe.

I, for one, never thought that MacWorld would cheapen its integrity in such a fashion. I don't think they have in this case or in any of the other cases I have read since I've been a subscriber. I will continue to be a subscriber BECAUSE I trust MacWorld and its editors, whether they are advertising editors or editorial copy staff. But the possibility did cross my mind, and it kind of scared me. I think that's the only reason why a disclaimer might be important. I'd expect MacWorld's editors to be able to rip into a product if it was godawful, whether the product's makers advertised with MacWorld or not.

If the only way to accomplish this is to have multiple people write shorter reviews of each product, fine. I don't think you guys need to "outsource" the writing of reviews to non-MacWorld staffers, but it's important to readers to know that they can trust that the review (which is IN MacWorld, has MacWorld's name on it, regardless of the byline indicating who actually wrote the copy) as being unbiased.

[dfs]

Thanks, Azurite, it's time that somebody wrote something thoughtful and illuminating in this string. You cover plenty of territory here, and I agree with almost everything you say. There's one more issue you don't touch on which still concerns me: even if we are assured that advertisement does not color the content of reviews, it it equally necessary to be assured that advertisement does not dictate what does or does not get reviewed, and whether or not products get reviewed in a timely manner. When you consider MacWorld's considerable power to make or break products, choices like this entail a huge responsibility. A reader could also disturbed by the speed with which this review came out. Even if, as Chris Breen says, the reviewer was given an advanced copy so that he had sufficient time for an in-depth review of Bento, the remarkable speed with which this exceedingly review came out, as if it had been jumped to the top the heap by some kind of favoritism, combined with its almost entirely positive assessment and lack of disclosure about the partnership bit (whatever that is) do combine to make it look like MW violated the "Caesar's wife" principle, if nothing else. The cure for all these things, and the surest way to guarantee reader's trust, is transparency, so that readers understand what the editors are doing and why. Personal attacks on people who raise questions about the process are not an adequate substitute and probably make the situation look worse than it actually is.

[Chaac]

DFS:

I understand and share your concern about this matter as a MacWorld reader. Maybe not as harshly, but I do.

I think the editorial side of MacWorld didn't see this coming and got a little too excited and bias with the Bento 2 release. I also think they will take the advice on the disclaimer because they are a great magazine that listens to their readers (this is the best example) and knows the core of their business is credibility. If they would be really trying to be "evil" or tricky, they wouldn't have made this forum or have had this discussion. They are as shocked as you seem to be by this conspiracy theory. You have made your point though the means they provided you to be heard quickly and to the people you think is immediately affected.

On the business side, well... partnering with the same companies you review could be a great financial decision but also the source of very questionable ethics as journalists. If they decided (financially) to take that road then these are some of the journalistic problems faced when confronted by a harsh and passionate reader...

Move on people, don't do it again and move on.

[rkatx]

This post is not necessarily aimed at the last post, but I have been following this thread since I asked real users of Bento 2 to say what they thought about the product rather than getting hung up in FM proceedures for this piece of software and it's upgrade policies. Obviously many were (are) not thrilled with Bento 1's capabilities and hoped 2 would provide some fixes. Apparently it did not.

I came to Macworld through an ongoing Apple 'Hot Tip' (s) mailed to me by Apple. If the intro paragraph catches my attention for my needs I click on 'read more.' I do not read Macworld rarely if ever, even though I have been a Apple fan for many years.

I did find the review of Bento 2 to be 'glowing' and sounded as though it was the piece of software I was looking for. I was ready to buy right then and there...until I began reading the discussions where I fell upon users whining about the FM upgrade policies and how they had been ripped.

I ask someone to tell me what they really thought of it's usage a capabilities and I received 3 replies that were all valid and honest. I then decided to download the trial offer and I am glad I did. I thought Appleworks DB sucked. Well this thing is almost incomprehensible and frustrating. It is most assuredly NOT the piece of software I was led to believe by the review, in my opinion.

I'm not stupid with 6 years of Fine Arts/Art History and a major in Clinical Psych. Granted this does not make me a Apple or database geek. But I have some sense of ability to know off the bat if the software I am about to purchase is 'intuitive' and something I want to spend $49 on. So far I cant see it and there is a paucity, and always has been, in this what seems to me lucrative niche. I'd pay $100 for a DB that was reasonable to use and did the small stuff well.

I feel I am speaking from the perspective of a typical Apple/Apple authored software user with a brain and ability to reason or I would be using a Dell an HP or a Vaio all of which I have owned but yet always have been drawn back to Apple and Apple related solid products.

I have totally enjoyed the rhetoric of the last 10 or so replies to this Bento/Bento 2 thread and the ethical implications of which I have not given much thought to since I do not read the mags. All have brought up and stated their respective points of view very well and although I do not know who you people are, I suspect by the tone and tenor of your arguments you are writers and editors of Macworld and related bloggosphere.

Certainly I digress, however my point is I do not care about all the implications that have been brought forward. I simply want a decently written HONEST review of a product and after using the Bento 2 trial software I do not believe this reviewer was unbiased, OR, OR he...well I just cannot believe he did not understand the software. He wrote very well, well enough to ALMOST get me to by it.

So thank Buddha for the discussion boards!

And I am disappointed.

[wideEyed]

Dear Editor MW

Your rhetorical flourishes attempt to conceal several facts. One, those of us surprised by the very mistaken review are not in-fact 'shils' for some other product. So it's no use using that as a reason to not question MW magazine's ethics. An editor should welcome such ? it indicates you have an active, intelligent readership (if only via apple hotnews in my case).

Two, MW has a considerable interest in keeping any large advertiser happy, but Apple in particular because of the need to stay 'on the drip' with apple for product news and early hardware samples (as a former PM of my country refereed to the relationship between his govt. and media where they treat each other decently or lose early leaks on stories). To suggest an editor is unaware of the financial impact of a company, who is it's largest advertiser (if they are) and the creator of platform that is the magazines raison d'etre is laughable, whatever chinese-walls etc etc exist. Just because you personally have not intended to hoodwink the public with a very sloppy puff-piece of a review as a conscious decision (assuming for now this is true), this does not mean that MW magazine has not in effect done just that.

Your strong language and shoot the messenger approach suggest you have a personal difficulty seeing the subtle difference of these two criticisms. Or perhaps you seek to screen the responsibility from yourself with a fair dose of bluster and language, which shows poor leadership on your part, if so.

Three, a Bento review first attracted me to Bento 1.0 along with FMs glossy movie ads. The general experience of the software was considerable less encouraging and I use it for far less tasks than I envisaged because of some rather major bugs/holes in the software. Any decent reviewer should have availed herself of those in deep testing not superficial drive around the block type reviewing and checked each and every one in v2. Bento 1 was really a beta you payed for and then help with over the FM forums. I suggest you read some of the threads to really get an idea of how frustrating it was for people, even people who thought the idea of Bento was inspired, as I did.

I used to teach Uni students Photoshop and so many would come to me asking for an exemption saying they knew the software already. In all cases this amounted to knowing the names of half the tools in the tool pallete and the filter menu. Actually using them, in combination, to fullfil a brief, to produce something useful to a client, was not within there abilities. Same with some software reviewers and I humbly suggest you leave it to people with a little industry know-how instead of journalists who are good at summarising information and making it 'light' as opposed to getting to the facts and weighing the merits. Generally this requires more experience than just writing ability and a love of new product.

Frankly I'm more suprised by your response than the original errors of the review. Mac mags have always flown the flag as have Mac columns in the papers, and when every PC magazine was predicting the demise of Apple to IBM in the 90s that was a nice enough comfort. These days I think apple can take it on the chin. I though FM was fully disolved from apple until this minor scandal so you always learn something, don't you.

Best
Alastair

[andyotter]

"I'm not stupid with 6 years of Fine Arts/Art History and a major in Clinical Psych. Granted this does not make me a Apple or database geek. But I have some sense of ability to know off the bat if the software I am about to purchase is 'intuitive' and something I want to spend $49 on. So far I cant see it and there is a paucity, and always has been, in this what seems to me lucrative niche. I'd pay $100 for a DB that was reasonable to use and did the small stuff well. I feel I am speaking from the perspective of a typical Apple/Apple authored software user with a brain and ability to reason or I would be using a Dell an HP or a Vaio all of which I have owned but yet always have been drawn back to Apple and Apple related solid products. ... I simply want a decently written HONEST review of a product and after using the Bento 2 trial software ."

Yes rkatx, I would imagine there are a lot of smart, creative and design-savvy people like you out there who know that the few $100 they initially "save" on a Dell is a false economy and have realised that is smart, creative and design-savvy software that saves you time and money. That is why Bentover is such a wasted opportunity; it could have "quietly clever" as iCal ^ AddressBook ^ Numbers ^ Pages (for all their faults) are.

Allow me to give a few examples of "quietly clever" so others can then compare with Bentover:


* If someone sends you a mail titled "Creative Planning Meeting" with a day/date/time in the message body, a subtle little box appears around the date when you hover over it. This leads you to a dropdown which allows you (with one click) to create a New iCal event whic, by default, is called "Creative Planning Meeting". Productive.
* Similar timesavers are obviously available linking address data from Mail to AddressBook. Then in (iWorks') Pages, Just dragging a contact from AddressBook onto a letter automatically puts the relevant name, address, etc in the appropriate places. So neat.
Now let's look at Bentover*:
* at first glance, things look promising; in your AddressBook "Library", for example, all your Groups are automatically there as "Collections". Sensible.
* As soon as you ask the app to walk, however, it's pants fall round it ankles and it trips over. You can create "Smart Collections" (think iTunes Smart Playlist /Mail's Smart Mailbox), you can drag a (Static) collection to a another Library as a "related records list, but you CAN'T it with a Smart Collection.Instead you have to remember to update your static Collection by dragging the Smart Collection onto it! Annoying, Stupid and Dysfunctional. Note: for an example to clarify terminology , see my review at www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/33479 .
* You're looking at the data in one Library/Collection (say Clients) and you want to see some data in another (say Invoices). Obviously, you go to open another window, right? Not with Bento you don't - one window is all you get. Oldies among you will find their minds drifting back to the straitjacketed days of MSDoS....need I say more
* Here's one I love; small but so indicative of the difference between smart software and dumb. You start off Bento with all these template Libraries, each with their own icon. Naturally, not all the fields suit your needs so you change them. After a bit, you go change one of the icons cos it doesn't connote what you want it to/ you've got more than one of it. Oh but you can't (unless you join the bento forums to learn about do-not-try-at-home system hacks!). Dim, Dim, slap forehead dim!
I could go on, but I've shown enough to illustrate the difference between
# "quietly clever" software, where the curious and aware will constantly discover smart, thoughtful and creative features
# half-arsed software like Bento where you waste hours thinking you must have missed something because "surely there must be a way to do xxx....". Ironically, I waste more time when this happens (thankfully rarely) on a Mac, because on a PC I start off with far lower expectations!
* it must be pointed out that the above describes the "features" of Bento1. It may be that these have be sorted in Bento2 but I have read no evidence of it. Or maybe it's simply that FM realise that, by highlighting such fixes, potential buyers would realise how shoddy their first attempt was (Bento1=BentoAlpha/Beta, Bento2=Bento0.2?) and therby doubt its pseudo-upgrade...
Being ever the optimist, I imagine a different conspiracy to the one argued about previously in this thread:
Apple go to FileMaker and say "We're thinking a building an iWorkPlus with a neat smart-linking database app added to the the suite for an extra $40. We'd like you to test the market/concept for us, but make a really crappy job of it, would you, so all the folk who you've jipped will be happy to migrate to us? After all they were never gonna shell out for your FMpro bloatware, were they?! And, tell you what, when we've built it right we promise to include an 'Export to FileMakerPro' command for those who become database freaks." Sounds far-fetched, but fits all the facts!

[SteilyNeily]

Interesting. So that means that those of us who took the risk early [early adopters] and helped make Bento a success are punished by having to pay full boat for an upgrade of capabilities that should have been in the first version, while those who are jumping in because of the success WE MADE IT, get a better deal. Wowzer marketing.
Stuff it. —SteilyNeily

[James101]

Steilly Neilly, No. You are meant to pay for version 2 in which things that should have been in version 1 are still not there.

My wish was to copy a lot of AppleWorks database files to Bento.

The workaround offered with great exultation for Bento 1 was exporting them as text, converting to csv, then importing to Bento. But exporting AW database files as text strips the field names, which have to be meticulously reentered in a new, pretty, Bento database, using its non-intuitive procedures, before copying the data.

The workaround offered with great exultation for Bento 2 was exporting them as text, converting to csv, then importing to Bento. But exporting AW database files as text strips the field names, which have to be meticulously reentered in a new, pretty, Bento database, using its non-intuitive procedures, before copying the data.

To do this with a backlog of 20 plus years of files is not worth doing. I'll stay with AppleWorks.

That AppleWorks is still so useable, useful, and versatile after two decades is a great compliment to its programmers.

That Bento is still so unuseable and useless after two versions .....

[rkatx]

Andyotter, your 'quietly clever' concept is what always made me buy another Apple computer.

I have an iBook G4 sitting next to my new iMac w/27" monitor and I could in no way be happier with any other computer.
I'm not a 'power user' but I have certain issues I must deal with as a photographer.

I used Appleworks for years sort of grudgingly thinking there has to be a more 'elegant' visually (shows my shallowness) db but Appleworks did (and now I guess does) do any job I asked it to and after a short learning curve I came to depend on it big time.

But I always had a nagging feeling it 'sucked'. Now I know better. As I mentioned in my last post there seems to be a nice huge niche for a decent/visually elegant as well as a functionally elegant small time user db.
Every morning when I try to create from a blank Bento 2 template, I get so pissed I stop so my whole day is not sucked up by this trash.

I believe Bento 2 is still the beta. I did not use Bento 1 but from what I read I find it hard to believe it could be less user friendly and 'intuitive.'

And so far all I ask of it was to help me track auto expenses and after 3 days of the trial version I still have all my paper data spread out over my desk thinking 'I know this thing has to be easier but I'm just not getting it.' Then I wistfully think back over how I tamed Appleworks and it now contains all my important info. But apparently it is not going anywhere. I depended upon the written review of Bento 2 in Macworld, presented to me by Apple, to be a nice upgrade and a solution to moving all my 'stuff' to a db that sounded like a step up and had more user friendly features.

Anyway, I guess I am beating a dead horse. Obviously, I am not a mental user like most of the people posting to this thread but rather more of an emotional user of products.
I can't write code (if I could I'd write a basis for what I am talking about most of us sound like we were looking for) I just try to use software the way it was designed.

Believe it or not I read the user manuals before first use.

[andyotter]

Not completely sure what you mean by "mental user", rkatx, but think I know what you're saying about "emotional user of products". A good example of this, I think is my dear old mum who, at age 77, has just switched to a MacBook after 5years with a Dell. unlike you she doesn't read manuals unless she's got a real problem like a system hang-up. Nonetheless, because everything about her Mac says, "come on in and play!", she's calling/mailing me on nearly daily basis about new stuff she's learned: "Guess what ! I've just put Jude's photo into my address book. I'm not sure whether I shall be able to do it again, but its very exciting. .... I'm just going to Google for a one handed tray, then I'm going to make some lemon curd. What an exciting life I lead.". I kid you not; she's now saying she wants to buried with her MacBook!

when I first saw Bent, I nearly recommended it to her. SO Glad I didn't! I'd have felt so responsible for the confusing muddle it would have led her into.

Btw, I don't think it's shallow to hanker for visual elegance in software. When trying shareware,I take it as a rule of thumb that if the interface looks clunky and PC-like, it probably hasn't been designed with the quasi-religious conviction of Apple Design Principles. Not to say that of Apple/ClarisWorks; it's just that it was pretty elegant back in the days of 9" MacPlus's and dot matrix printers but times move on!

What's annoying abt Bent (to finish back on the main topic) is that, superficially, it looks Apple-ish thus luring buyers in. And the trouble with databases is that you need to build a fair bit before the limitations of Bent dawn on you in a horrible realisation that you've wandered into a rather ugly cul-de-sac. That's why I hope that potential new customers read these fora instead of the Prozac review and DO NOT BUY THIS RUBBISH.

[exaccess]

I bought Bento1 in July without a trial because I assumed incorrectly that FM would fix bugs and soon add the seriously missing features (like printing more than one record per page!) that forum participants were clamoring about. As I posted on the FM Bento forum 8/14, after investing a lot of time trying workarounds, I concluded it was useless to me, and I haven't opened it since. I am angry about having paid for a useless Beta-level product and received no upgrade offer. Many others have posted all the reasons why Bento1 was too incomplete and buggy to have been released/sold as anything other than a Beta. Also lots of comments about pricing tactics, but these miss the point. I would be willing to pay a second $49 ($98 total) if I then had a functional, supported product. Such a product would be worth $98. BUT it's now clear that FM's policy will be to keep charging $49 every release, and no amount of bug fixing or incremental new features will make it worthwhile to pay a cumulative $147, $196, & $245 for Bento 3, 4, & 5 respectively!!
As outraged as all the postings here and on the FM Bento forums are, we are all a small percentage of the hundreds of thousands of downloads, so it appears that FM's strategy is to use the attractive interface/ease of use to suck in thousands of new customers and not worry about the fallout. It's sad to see such schlock marketing in the technology space. FM makes even MS look civilized.