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Tapatalk user revolt

W

wrench

Well-Known Member
As some of you know, Tapatalk has been on the path from a 5-star app to a 1-star app. With their most recent update for Android and iOS, it is mission accomplished.

I have never seen an app's users in such open revolt. Here's just one of many threads on the Tapatalk forum slamming the app: OFFICIAL: NEW ANDROID INTERFACE WALKTHROUGH AND NEGATIVE FEEDBACK DISCUSSION

Google Play reviews have plummeted, with most of the recent reviews being 1-star (from an app that used to consistently garner 4- and 5-star reviews).

There's even a Facebook page demanding Tapatalk bring back an older version of the app: Bring Back Classic Tapatalk.

All this because Tapatalk decided that being the most efficient mobile forum browser wasn't enough and that they should become Pinterest or Facebook for Forums.
 
wrench said:
As some of you know, Tapatalk has been on the path from a 5-star app to a 1-star app. With their most recent update for Android and iOS, it is mission accomplished.

I have never seen an app's users in such open revolt. Here's just one of many threads on the Tapatalk forum slamming the app: OFFICIAL: NEW ANDROID INTERFACE WALKTHROUGH AND NEGATIVE FEEDBACK DISCUSSION

Google Play reviews have plummeted, with most of the recent reviews being 1-star (from an app that used to consistently garner 4- and 5-star reviews).

There's even a Facebook page demanding Tapatalk bring back an older version of the app: Bring Back Classic Tapatalk.

All this because Tapatalk decided that being the most efficient mobile forum browser wasn't enough and that they should become Pinterest or Facebook for Forums.
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Fully agreed... The free version have been made too complicated. The paid version has become slow to load pages, slow to start and even slow to close. I don't know why they changed the UI?
Further I get many false notifications. I have read the threads but they are still in bold and and....
BTW is there any alternative? I want to switch over.
 
apple2005 said:
BTW is there any alternative? I want to switch over.
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I don't know if there are any good alternatives. There's always just using your mobile browser, but that's not a good solution to juggle multiple forums. The biggest problem any new mobile forum app would have is convincing forum owners to install their plugin, which is where Tapatalk has a massive edge, as many thousands of forums have installed their plugin. Though Tapatalk's apparent suicide march is definitely creating an opportunity for a competing app.

Best solution near-term in my opinion is to download an older version of Tapatalk, which is what I've done.
 
wrench said:
I don't know if there are any good alternatives. There's always just using your mobile browser, but that's not a good solution to juggle multiple forums. The biggest problem any new mobile forum app would have is convincing forum owners to install their plugin, which is where Tapatalk has a massive edge, as many thousands of forums have installed their plugin. Though Tapatalk's apparent suicide march is definitely creating an opportunity for a competing app.

Best solution near-term in my opinion is to download an older version of Tapatalk, which is what I've done.
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Thanks for your reply. Where I can get an older version (paid and free)? But how can I protect from being updated? If there is a version which playstore will not bother to update, would be nice.
 
There are fortunately a few alternatives, depending on what exactly you're after.

  • Forums for Android, the official AF-branded Tapatalk-based client. It's based on an older version of Tapatalk, and works quite well with the new Xenforo software. That's probably your best bet if AF is the fix you need. ;)
  • ForumRunner is another alternative. It seemed to work okay on the older vBulletin system, but I haven't tested it since we moved to Xenforo.
  • ForumFiend is another one built on the Tapatalk API. No experience with that one though, so let us know how it goes if you try it!
 
apple2005 said:
Thanks for your reply. Where I can get an older version (paid and free)? But how can I protect from being updated? If there is a version which playstore will not bother to update, would be nice.
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We can't really discuss where to get apps (particularly paid ones) aside from the officially-supported distribution channels (Play, Amazon, etc). While your intentions are undoubtedly pure, that starts to border on piracy and we can't risk having our forum flagged for that. If you go looking on your own, though, please be very careful as it's easy to pick up malware from less reputable file hosts. Thanks for understanding. :)
 
FWIW, the AF branded app was updated with the latest changes. Also, do not post links to alternative versions not santioned by the TT developers. If they post the older versions on their site, it is OK to link to there. As far as where people get older versions from their own backups. As CS mentioned, alternate download sites often have malware embedded.
 
codesplice said:
We can't really discuss where to get apps (particularly paid ones) aside from the officially-supported distribution channels (Play, Amazon, etc). While your intentions are undoubtedly pure, that starts to border on piracy and we can't risk having our forum flagged for that. If you go looking on your own, though, please be very careful as it's easy to pick up malware from less reputable file hosts. Thanks for understanding. :)
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Thanks for your advice. Right now I am having the paid version of Tapatalk which I bought on Playstore. By no means I intended to promote piracy. I was just asking if I could find the old versions of the paid version (as I already bought it) or free version. Because I am unhappy from the new versions.
 
I still have the old Tapatalk Pro. It's been funny about logins for the last couple of weeks (not actually loading AF unless I clear cache and log in again), but I tried the current version and decided these were minor inconveniences compared to the new version's layout! ;)
 
After the latest version was ripped to shreds by users in this thread at the Tapatalk support forum, Ken, Tapatalk's 'community manager' finally revealed why they foisted this monstrosity on its users:

Ken said:
But the fact is right now our users are 90% male and a considerable percentage of the overall userbase are on forums like XDA or other highly technical subject matter forums. If we get a complaint, it is reasonable to assume that this demographic will be highly represented. We have to work with what we got here. The need to cater to our core audience is indeed important and that's why we are looking to weave your feedback into future updates. That didn't happen with the last major release which was a misstep.

The number of users that an app has to get to hit a critical mass needs to go beyond just hitting one or two demographics. But who's to say a company can't accomplish a measure of mainstream success AND find a way to satisfy their longtime users? Whether or not, we must try. I'm sure that not all the new features will appeal to our core audience but design wise we want to make sure these new features no longer get in the way of the core audience experience.
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I read that as them saying we want more women and forums that don't deal with technical subject matters (note: technical subject matter doesn't mean just high tech - also includes other subjects that guys will discuss the intricacies of, whether it's cars, flashlights, firearms, cameras, etc.). So that's why Tapatalk is including stuff like huge thumbnails, trending discussions, etc. They want to be more like Pinterest and Facebook, and they think this will draw more women.

I think they're missing the elephant in the living room. The reality is that online forums *are* heavily male. A pretty forum browsing app isn't going to change that.
 
wrench said:
I think they're missing the elephant in the living room. The reality is that online forums *are* heavily male. A pretty forum browsing app isn't going to change that.
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While I agree that online technical forums are male-centric I can tell you that there are plenty of forums with a skewed men to women ration. For example, I have several Shetland Sheepdogs and the "SheltieNation" forum is primarily women. Granted it's a small boutique forum, nothing like AF or XDA, but put a few of them together with say medical, education and cooking forums and you have quite a bit of gender diversity.
 
Most people I know are not even tech savvy enough to join a forum, much less download and install an app on their phone that will improve their forum browsing experience. I believe tapatalk was and probably always will be am app that primarily appeals to at least moderately tech savvy people. My father may stumble into a forum at some point when he is trying to figure out how to jump start his prius, but I doubt he will ever install tapatalk on his phone. Just sayin.
 
While we can grumble about it among ourselves, it will do no good for getting it fixed. The OP linked to the best place to get our thoughts into their hands.
 
Maybe there should be a way to install an update in a temp file for at least 24 hours before it overwrites the file it is updating. I don't use Tapatalk, but I have had other updates that I didn't like, and 15 minutes isn't enough time to really investigate in some cases. Once the developer sees all the uninstalls from the temp, he/she/it should realize the update didn't go as planned.
 
mikedt said:
I see there's a rapidly growing petition running on Tapatalk's own forum. So they may well take heed and restore the original one.
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Doubtful. The very few responses by Tapatalk in their own forum after the latest update has been to the effect of "the best thing to do is tweak the current version". They have no intention of rolling back to the older (and better) versions. Seems they are committed to making Tapatalk more like Pinterest and Facebook.

To give you an idea of what Tapatalk thinks of their current user base, consider that the current Android version was released a few weeks prior to the current iOS version, and they had a massive outpouring of negative feedback to the Android version both on the forum and through reviews on Google Play. That didn't stop them from rolling out the same garbage to iOS users, with very similar reactions.
 
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