Tapatalk Forum App Review

Have you ever visited a forum using Safari on your iPhone? If you haven't, good; keep it that way. If you have, you know it's an anti-aesthetical, layout-logistics nightmare, resulting in a frustrating, hurried exercise in swiping, pinching, zooming, scrolling and throwing. Thanks to apps like Tapatalk, the number of flying-iphone related injuries should be significantly down everywhere.

According to Tapatalk, it currently houses 11,529 public forums (over 12,000 according to its developer, Quoord Systems Limited, with 300 added every week), spanning 12 total categories, ranging from Aquarium and Animals to Technology. There are enough sub-categories within these, such as Watch (that's right, watches, like the kind you wear on your wrist), Cigarette and Pipe, Blues Brother Central and Rupert Grint Forum, for those of us who just can't get enough of Rupert Grint, to appeal to even the most eclectic users.

There are hundreds of public forums listings within each category; enough to satisfy your curiosity, but most are generally obscure and known only to those die-hard Rupert Grint fans who visit the site/forum regularly. Diversity is a good thing and once well-known web destinations become familiar with Tapatalk and how easy it is to use, they'll undoubtedly realize it's a great tool to boost their traffic and forum memberships.

Tapatalk's main, introductory screen consists of a collective display of the newer forums taking advantage of the Tapatalk plug-in. From this screen, users can browse these new entries, the entire collection of forums by Category, or Search for a particular forum.

Thanks to its speed and streamlined interface, using Tapatalk on the iDevice is even EASIER than participating in forums using a regular web browser. It contains most, if not all, of the features and capabilities offered by a browser, but in a compact, easy-to-use, no frills manner. Users lose very little, if anything, in the way of features and control; quite the opposite. Members can also easily see who else is online, view Board Statistics and their user profile. Users can even rearrange/re-configure their menu bar items.

Reviewing Tapatalk is different from reviewing other apps for the iDevice, because it's one of only a small handful of similar apps. While there are several apps dedicated to specific forums, only a few, from what I found in the app store, allow users to competently access a multitude of different forums.

That said, I've been waiting for an app like Tapatalk. I'm registered with so many forums, I was forced to purchase a secure, personal data app to keep track with my plethora of usernames and registration info.

Overall, Tapatalk is fast, convenient, easy-to-use and works just as advertised. Once more (hopefully) web site forums jump on its bandwagon, it will truly be, as stated in its App Store description: "one of those applications that you didn't know you needed until you had it and then you couldn't do without it!"

Website owners/administrators, PLEASE add Tapatalk to the Tapatalk of your list of things to do!