It took literally years and years for the developer to create a version of Tap Forms for Apple Silicon. And now it’s finally there: Tap Forms Pro. As a subscription software. 
For $/€ 50 per year. Thanks, but no thanks. I have absolutely zero trust in a developer that pretty much abandoned his app for so long to all of a sudden deliver the goods. A pity, as there is a serious lack of (afoordable) databases on macOS,
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Keeping the fact that it will be subscription based for so long doesn’t help his case either.
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I use Tap Forms daily, and I was taken surprise by a mention of Tap Forms Pro in a recent update for the app.
The new features don’t catch my attention for a major upgrade. What about massively revamped scripting support, or multiple options for true end-to-end encryption? One of the sync methods (CouchDB) was dropped, apparently without warning (while WebDAV was added).
The developer has always been quick to respond with support questions. That’s really important. Yet I’m also puzzled by the buggy display of the revamped website, the fact the forums went offline as the dev apparently moved to another website hosting platform. All strange for a big version rollout.
I understand developers moving to a subscription model, but the way this has been carried out, and the very slow development cycle, doesn’t give me confidence. I really want to feel differently. I’ve been a huge fan of Tap Forms. It isn’t the prettiest, but it’s been very reliable for my needs. I guess I’ll wait and see if anything enticing is added to the Tap Forms Pro feature list.
I’ve thought about switching to Ninox, but I can’t get a straight answer from them about whether their databases that are synced through iCloud would be protected by Apple’s Advanced Data Protection.
I actually just purchased Tap Forms 5 a week or so ago. I think it was $60 or $70 Canadian. I’m a little choked about the upgrade path for something I just purchased. I’d get 6 months free, I think, then I’d have to pay another $60 or $70 for a year. I’ll probably just keep using TF5.
Hello. I’m Brendan, the developer of Tap Forms.
I’m very sorry it took me so long to build Tap Forms Pro. I’d been working on it for 2 years before it was finally ready to release to the world. I did not abandon Tap Forms at all. I’m a solo indie app developer, so I don’t have a big team of people to help me write the code. Software takes time to develop.
I switched to the subscription model because it became clear to me that this was the way of software development in order to be able to both earn a living, and to be able to provide features and enhancements on an ongoing basis and to be fairly compensated for that. I will be able to release new features as they’re completed rather than holding back like I did this time. This will be the last time that I hold any features back for an upgrade. You’ll get them when I complete them. And I have lots more to give to Tap Forms to make it better and better. In the 16 years I’ve been developing Tap Forms, I only charged for a single upgrade (to Tap Forms 5). That’s it. And now again with Tap Forms Pro.
As for my website forum being down, I had some troubles migrating the BBPress forum to a new template for the new website design and that’s why it was down. I got it working again, although there are some glitches with the mobile version at the moment. It’s the exact same forum software and user and post database it was before. So nothing changed or lost. I didn’t move to a new forum provider or platform. Just a new website design.
The reason CouchDB is no longer supported in Tap Forms Pro is because Tap Forms 5 had been using the CouchbaseLite framework to provide the database underpinnings. The company that made CouchbaseLite stopped supporting the version that I was using, and their newer version required the use of their own Couchbase server software which I didn’t think my customers would want to have to get. Also it was Intel native and I needed an Apple Silicon database engine, so that’s why I switched database engines. I switched to Apple’s CoreData software. One less third-party framework to use. I also added WebDAV so that you could still sync to a server on your own network. The end result will be a similar capability. Plus iCloud sync also allows syncing with different Apple IDs now. And there’s also Dropbox syncing too. And you can put in a sync password so that any data synced to whichever sync service you choose will be encrypted first. Just make sure you have the same password on all devices.
If you purchased Tap Forms within the past 6 months you do get 6 months free. And if you purchased it longer ago than that you get a 50% discount off the first year. If you bought the Mac version direct, contact me at support@tapforms.com so I can set you up with a discount code.
If you prefer not to use Tap Forms because of these reasons, I completely understand and that’s your decision. But I would encourage you to give it a try and see how you like it. I’ve put my heart and soul into Tap Forms Pro and I do hope you at least consider giving it a try. And I’ll continue to support all of my customers as I always do with personal support responses no matter which version you use.
Thanks!
Brendan Duddridge
Calgary, Canada
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Trust arrives on foot, but leaves on horseback.
Thanks for your response, Brendan. It’s appreciated that you took the time to create an account on Talk.MPU and reply to this thread.
You certainly don’t have to apologize for taking your time to work on an update of your app. It’s your life and your company. However, and this is my personal opinion, it didn’t help in building trust in Tap Forms. There was basically no actively developed app left that hadn’t made the transition to Apple Silicon. Although I have no reason to question your honesty and good intentions, the fact that Tap Forms was kind of dead for such a long time – the introduction of Apple Silicon was in June 2020! – is enough reason for me to no longer invest in Tap Forms. Besides, and this is something unrelated to the long development time, the subscription is just too high for what I need TF for. I basically have just one database. I’ll be looking into FOSS alternatives, most likely a combination of a Mariadb/sqlite database with some no/low-code frontend. That transition will take some time (again), but will probably safer for the longer term.
Am I disappointed in Tap Forms and the lack of development over the last couple of years? For sure! Still I wish you and your company all the best.
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@tapzapp Thanks for sharing and explaining, Brendan. I’m not a developer but I appreciate how much pressure developers experience, especially solo ones, and I understand that making a living with an app has become more difficult over the years, necessitating things like subscription models.
You’ve made a solid and capable app that I’ve used for years, and I’m grateful for it. I’m glad that you’ve shared elsewhere that Tap Forms 5 will continue to be supported for the forseeable future, and I’ll be keeping my eye on upcoming additions to Tap Forms Pro.
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G’day Brendan. Nice note! I am off to look at your product right now. Clarke
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Brendan, I mistakenly thought your app was just some kind of form generator. After downloading, I can see it’s a complete database program. I’ve started the two week trial and will see if I can forego my Quicken subscription by tracking my investments in your app. Establishing lookups between tables and creating calculated fields was very simple. There’s a lot to explore in 14 days, but the first day has been really good.
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hehe… yup. Not just a form generator. A fully relational database engine. 16 years in development and more to come.
I’ve also been a long time user of Tapforms. I’m also a lite user, it’s not an app I use everyday. Subscriptions are for serious users that get an ROI out of the product. As I mentioned in the Devonthink 4 thread. Subscriptions weed out the casual user. I cannot justify the annual fee for Tapforms, so won’t continue using it. I’ve also been a lite user of Ninox and as there is no annual fee for me, will move my databases to that.
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No commitment. Still a subscription. This really doesn’t help.
(screenshot from the official Tap Forms forum)
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Developers ship better features faster with no roadmap commitment. Roadmaps are for risk-averse stakeholders and customers who want to monitor the direction of a project.
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We’re not talking about roadmaps here. The important part in the above post is “Features and fixes will be released when they’re ready.”
Compare this to a magazine. Nobody would accept that they’d only get a new edition when the “articles are ready”. Even not if the quality of the articles would supposedly improve by waiting another month or two. Or a year or two.
With introducing a subscription model comes great responsibility. It’s not a one-way street.
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The “released when ready” attitude is associated with quality in software. Magazines don’t work like software since part of the work is regular small features and editors can source from contributors as much as needed to fill space.
Big researched pieces do have unknown complexity and value before they’re finished, like software features, and magazines don’t publicly commit to publishing them.