If you are familiar with Objective-C then you should look into using CoreData. It has multiple serialization formats. One of which is to a SQLite file. Another is XML.

I've used CoreData to quickly knock up applications to manage small data sets. I have a program to track workouts. Record recipes. A mini issue tracker. Small time stuff like that. Nothing took more than an hour or two to get an initial version working.

Not quite as beginner friendly as MS Access, but a really nice system in my opinion.