A nice review of Tap Forms compared to Bento was just released on the AppStorm website.
Anyone interested in seeing how Tap Forms compares to Bento should read this review:
http://mac.appstorm.net/reviews/productivity-review/tap-forms-a-solid-alternate-to-filemakers-bento/
Please note however that the article has one inaccuracy in which they state Tap Forms doesn't have the advanced search capabilities of Bento to filter your records. It does. You just have to click the + button beneath the Search field right after you've entered in a search term. This is part of the Tap Forms Saved Search function, which is available on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac Versions. And when using iCloud sync you can have access to the same set of Saved Searches across all 3 versions.
I've notified the author of this, so he may or may not adjust the article at some point.
Thanks!
Brendan
I really need the WIFI LAN sync functions. I think that the reason I prefer Bento over Filemaker. How about Tapforms?
iCloud Sync is not a good alternative because it will consume my expensive dataplan.
Hello Tuan,
You don’t have to allow iCloud to sync over your data plan. There’s a setting to turn that off so that it will only sync when it gets to a WiFi network. Tap Forms uses iCloud for syncing.
Thanks,
Brendan
I am a veteran of one days use with Tap Forms and have been a heavy Bento User. In Bento I used Smart Collections a lot and was absolutely delighted to find Saved searches are a significantly powerful feature with similar capability to bento Smart Collections.
It was one of the main things I was looking for in a Bento alternative.
The use case I often perform is to have items in a database with checkboxes such as ‘Checked by QA team’ or ‘Released to production’. Then I have a saved search for database items that have ‘Checked by QA team’ set to No. Then when I go through that list as I tick items (ie make the Yes) and then click on the Form in the list they disappear from the list (after clicking main form and then saved search again) leaving only the remaining items I need to process. The extra effort to click the Form and saved search again to see the diminished list would be nice to avoid but for two clicks I get to see my completed items disappear from my to do list!
Well done Brendan I hope more people get to understand how powerful saved searches can be.
Hello Allan,
Yes, the saved search doesn’t execute until you select it or if you refresh that view. On the iPad you can just rotate the display to portrait and then to landscape to refresh the view. I should do a pull-to-refresh on that view.
Thanks!
Brendan
Is there any way to sync without iCloud? Even using wires? I have said “no” to iCloud.
Hi Pinto,
No, I’m sorry, but there isn’t. iCloud is the only sync solution at the moment.
Thanks,
Brendan
Just downloaded the trail version of tap forms to replace Bento. Have tried exporting one of my templates with records from Bento but seems that only the first two records are imported. Is this because it is a trial version or is there perhaps some other prob?
Hi Eric,
Yes, this is a limitation of the Trial version. If you delete all the records from the built-in forms, then you can import a maximum of 15 records into the entire database. There must have been 13 records there to begin with so that’s why only 2 records imported.