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Apple Now Lets Customers Rate and Review Pre-Installed Apps on the App Store

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Apple now lets users rate and review pre-installed iPhone apps on the App Store, such as Maps, Podcasts, Mail, and others, bringing the company's apps to parity with how users criticize and/or laud third-party apps on the platform.

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Spotted first by 9to5Mac, Apple now lets users leave a zero to five-star rating for a number of its pre-installed apps, further enabling users to write their reviews. At the time of writing, the Podcasts app, which has faced a flurry of criticism, has a 2 out of 5-star rating out of 156 reviews, with other Apple apps varying.

Presently, no Apple app has a perfect five-star rating, with even the company's built-in Stocks app struggling to reach a 4 out of 5 grade. Notes has earned just 3.6 out of 5, while even Maps, which has received more attention from Apple over the years, has only a 3 out of 5 ratings.

By opening up its apps to ratings and reviews, Apple and its teams are now better able to receive more direct feedback for individual apps on ‌iPhone‌ and iPad. In light of recent App Store litigation, this move also nixes a potential criticism from Apple's detractors, who could have previously argued that by withholding ratings and reviews for pre-installed apps, Apple was being anti-competitive.

Apple's pre-installed apps, such as Mail, Podcasts, and Maps, don't receive regular App Store feature updates as other apps do; instead, their major updates are bundled with significant iOS releases.

Apple refines and tweaks all of its apps with each minor update for iOS and iPadOS, but significant changes, such as the ones that are likely to be requested through ratings and reviews, are not expected to come sporadically throughout the year, but instead, users will have to wait for the next major iOS release to see if their wishes have come true.

Article Link: Apple Now Lets Customers Rate and Review Pre-Installed Apps on the App Store
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/09/30/app-store-rating-pre-installed-apps/
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Those 1-star reviews on the Podcasts app seem a little unfair to me.

Yes, the UI could use some improvement. I particularly don't like how deeply it buries some commonly used (by me) features, like "recently played".

But, compared to the BBC's awful "BBC Sounds" app, which seems to go out of its way to make it hard for you to find content you're looking for (or even any good new relevant content), the Apple Podcasts app is a discovery dream!
 
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Apple maps is a lot better than it used to be !, it would have had some very bad reviews 3-5 years ago!
For me now the only thing missing is being able to download offline maps like you can do with Google Maps. This is very useful when you know you have routes planned through countryside with no/very poor phone signal.

And I wish it could be easier to set up "via" routes, I know my end destination (work place every morning) is not the route that Apple suggests but that's because I always go via somewhere else on the way.
 
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Yes, there are going to be an ungodly number of 1 star trolls, and hard to say any of there apps are truly 1 star worthy, but I personally find it hard to picture any as five star either and since feedback normally goes into an abyss, hopefully of countless real reviews all mention the same issues publicly maybe apple will be more likely to resolve them. Though I’m 99% sure this is to avoid legal issues but hopefully a positive outcome for the apps still. I’d love to use the native apps more because there are inherent benefits in doing so but most all lack a few features that make that so hard. Though understand everyone has there few features and apple wants to keep the apps having the broadest appeal.
 
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Reason077 said:
Those 1-star reviews on the Podcasts app seem a little unfair to me.

Yes, the UI could use some improvement. I particularly don't like how deeply it buries some commonly used (by me) features, like "recently played".

But, compared to the BBC's awful "BBC Sounds" app, which seems to go out of its way to make it hard for you to find content you're looking for (or even any good new relevant content), the Apple Podcasts app is a discovery dream!
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I just want to be able to play a series in order. When trying to sort it in order it used to still break it up by year so it would be like episode 100 - 125, 75 - 100, 50 - 75, 25-50, and then 1 - 25 or something stupid like that where you had to scour through it to find the actual next episode. It appears to actually be in order now (when the user turns on the setting to put them in order), but I still have to make sure I actually open the app and select my episode every time I listen. If I accidentally click the “listen now” button or whatever that recommendation that pops up when I start searching for it, it plays some random episode instead of picking up where I left off. I just want an option to easily listen to the episodes in order and pick up where I left off. It seems so simple.
 
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Shirasaki said:
Finally something users can pour their frustration and anger towards apple to, and it would be public.

Hope this will tear Apple’s “WE ARE THE BEST” tinfoil hat a little bit and face the reality.
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Agreed. This will be a good antidote to the marketing kool-aid in their keynotes where they state ‘Users love… [a stock app]’.

I think they’ll rapidly find that users really don’t love many of their apps.

(iOS 15 weather is fantastic though, credit where credit is due).

Incidentally, I was watching ‘Foundation’ - very good btw - I couldn’t help but think it was an analogy about Apple.

Fellow viewers will be able to easily guess what I mean (no spoilers here).
 
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Reason077 said:
Those 1-star reviews on the Podcasts app seem a little unfair to me.

Yes, the UI could use some improvement. I particularly don't like how deeply it buries some commonly used (by me) features, like "recently played".

But, compared to the BBC's awful "BBC Sounds" app, which seems to go out of its way to make it hard for you to find content you're looking for (or even any good new relevant content), the Apple Podcasts app is a discovery dream!
Click to expand...

Sadly, user reviews in 2021 is more or less useless. People that have nothing to complain about will seldomly leave a review in the first place so the metric will by default trend towards being negative by nature.

And those leaving negative reviews tend to not be even close to fair in their review. Regardless of the situation most will default to giving 1-star. There is no nuance to be had here.

I'm no huge fan of the Podcast.app myself. I find it lacking in terms of UX-design, and the fact that there is no easy way for me to access my default playlist directly is annoying. I have to open the app, then head into my playlist named "Priority Queue" and then I can start listening. Why can't I have it go directly into "Priority Queue" from the get-go like most third-party apps? I can't customise my queue even close to as detailed as some of the third-party apps.

The bottom bar in the Podcast.app has it's own place for "Listen Now". Sadly "Listen Now" doesn't take any of my habits or my customised "Priority Queue" into consideration so utilising "Listen Now" doesn't make much sense to me when my "Priority Queue" does everything better. If I could just swap the "Listen Now" button with my "Priority Queue" it would make life so much better for me.

Perhaps my biggest issue with the Podcast.app is the lack of Smart Playback like Overcast, PocketCast, Castro etc features. They've had it available for years now. Why is it that the Podcast.app can't trim silenced part of a podcast in a smart way like other apps can?


All of this makes me rate the Podcast.app 3 out 5 stars. Even with all these shortcomings it's not even close to being 1-star. To be fair, 1-star should mean that app isn't working at all. 2-star should mean it's working but it's truly terrible to use. 3-stars is more in line with something that is working, is working decent but have so much potential for improvement.
 
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bluecoast said:
Agreed. This will be a good antidote to the marketing kool-aid in their keynotes where they state ‘Users love… [a stock app]’.

I think they’ll rapidly find that users really don’t love many of their apps.

(iOS 15 weather is fantastic though, credit where credit is due).

Incidentally, I was watching ‘Foundation’ - very good btw - I couldn’t help but think it was an analogy about Apple.

Fellow viewers will be able to easily guess what I mean (no spoilers here).
Click to expand...
Apple isn't living on an other planet, they know really well, what Apple users don't like and they are not changing it on purpose, because they have built reputation over the years, that they make BEST service/app/product and giving in pressure from clients to make changes in the BEST product will wound their reputation and indirectly admit, they they haven't made the best product.
IMHO, Notes and reminders are so stuffed with unnecessary features, that those apps are not convenient to use for their primary goal.
 
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RamGuy said:
Perhaps my biggest issue with the Podcast.app is the lack of Smart Playback like Overcast, PocketCast, Castro etc features. They've had it available for years now. Why is it that the Podcast.app can't trim silenced part of a podcast in a smart way like other apps can?
Click to expand...

My guess is that this point, it’s a conscious decision by Apple not to include too many features in their stock apps. This avoids over complicating the app and over serving users.

Many users don’t need or care for smart speed, because their typical use case involves having a podcast show up, and them listening to it. At regular speed. That’s really all they want in an app.

What I see Apple likes to do is to bake in just enough functionality in their core apps to serve about 80% of their user base, and if they desire more, that’s where third party apps like overcast and Castro come in.
 
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Reason077 said:
Those 1-star reviews on the Podcasts app seem a little unfair to me.

Yes, the UI could use some improvement. I particularly don't like how deeply it buries some commonly used (by me) features, like "recently played".

But, compared to the BBC's awful "BBC Sounds" app, which seems to go out of its way to make it hard for you to find content you're looking for (or even any good new relevant content), the Apple Podcasts app is a discovery dream!
Click to expand...
Yeah people can be pretty harsh. I and many others end up using it so it's not like there are loads of better implementations out there.
 
Feyl said:
After I read this I went to App Store to leave some 2-3 stars reviews on there but it’s nothing there. Is this a regional thing?
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Function is available in Norway. But I can only see other Norwegian reviews (none), not US or other regions. Doubt our opinions are read by developers tbh.
 
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