Can now only review apps you purchased

[Pring]

Finally!

You can only review applications which you've actually bought! No more 1 star reviews by people who've not bought your app!

[m4rc]

Originally Posted by Pring

Finally!

You can only review applications which you've actually bought! No more 1 star reviews by people who've not bought your app!

Its nice for the developer, but its even nicer for the buyers, I don't want to know what someone thinks of an app when they have never tried it, thats irrelevant, and usually its just a whinge about the price. If someone has paid for it and doesn't like it I want to know, that will help me make an informed choice. I don't need some spoilt kid who's run out of iTunes Store credit to tell me the app 'should be free' just because they can't afford it.

[yoman]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F136 Safari/525.20)

wow. It's about time.

[moopf]

This is a really welcome move. Shame they aren't purging old reviews made by people who didn't buy an app, however. That would be another step in the right direction.

[sammich]

Honestly, how hard is the code to implement something like this?

[Pring]

I'd also like to see the star rating normalized for how helpful a review is. eg if someone gave a 0 star review but has "0 out of 5 people find this review helpful" then it wouldn't contribute to the star rating.

[Cyroceon]

This is a surprising move from Apple. I've noticed over the past few years that Apple is much more responsive to their customer needs/wants, and they are faster in implementation. App Store is out only 2 months and a few days, and BOOM a great change like this one. Good job Apple, I commend you.

[hellomoto4]

Thank you very much Apple!

I hate when I'm considering a download and people that haven't even downloaded (let alone read the description) think it's bad!

[cube]

They should remove the old baseless reviews, too.

[spyker3292]

Originally Posted by Cyroceon

This is a surprising move from Apple. I've noticed over the past few years that Apple is much more responsive to their customer needs/wants, and they are faster in implementation. App Store is out only 2 months and a few days, and BOOM a great change like this one. Good job Apple, I commend you.

Haha, ya like when they gave $100 credit to all those agree early iPhone buyers (me included, just not angry :P).

Anyway, this is great!

[macmacey]

I couldn't believe it until I saw the pop up for myself. Great job Apple! Now, please also remove past reviews posted by people who did not purchase the application. If you don't want to remove, then at least mark them with an "*" and recalculate the 5-star rating based only on people who purchased the app. This should also reduce the number of fake 5-star reviews from the few developers who engage in this practice.

One more request. Please provide the date of the review, the app version the person purchased, and the price they originally paid. Give me the option to only see reviews (and a 5-star rating) from people who actually paid $ for the app. If you don't want to reset the download counter for the free-to-paid apps, at least let me quickly find out how many reviewers paid for the app.

[ajnicho]

So those with cracked apps can't review either...?

[moopf]

Originally Posted by ajnicho

So those with cracked apps can't review either...?

haha, I think you know the answer to that one already. Aren't you clever.

[sushi]

This is good news.

It's about time they did it.

[Rojo]

Finally!! Though I agree Apple needs to find a way to get rid of older reviews from people who didn't buy the apps. It's only fair.

[arkitect]

How long did it take for the penny to drop at Apple?

[g4cubed]

Glad to see them finally get this done.
I agree that they should erase all the reviews and start new and if you purchased it you can review it again.

[ayasin]

Fantastic news. I agree also that old reviews with 1 star "lol all appz shud b free" should be purged.

[ayasin]

Originally Posted by g4cubed

I agree that they should erase all the reviews and start new and if you purchased it you can review it again.

I don't think they should purge old reviews, just the ones where people didn't buy the app. It's not fair to people who spent quite a bit of time writing detailed reviews (whether positive or negative) to be thrown out with the bath water.

[g4cubed]

Very true but wouldn't that take more effort on Apples part? Took them long enough to do something that should have been done from the beginning. But your idea would be the best.

[admanimal]

This is great news. Now I think the only thing they could do to make the review system better is to indicate which version of the app a particular review is for, so that a buyer can see whether a particular review is still completely accurate/relevant.

[Luap]

Agreed. Good news
I think we'll see a lot less trashy reviews written by angry penniless kids now.

[Delirium39]

Fantastic news! As a developer, this makes me very happy. Although I doubt they will purge any of the old reviews, as that would be an entirely different, and more difficult, task.

[ucfgrad93]

Originally Posted by yoman

wow. It's about time.

Agreed, it is way overdue, and a very welcome change.

[smfinlay]

I hate to harp on what everyone has already said. But this is really great news for the App Store. Too bad nothing can be done for previous bogus reviews but we should start to see things clear up in the near future.