When customers delete your app, they're asked to rate it.
A far larger majority of 'reviews' come from there, not the storefront.
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Apple Removes Old Non-Customer Reviews from App Store
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A far larger majority of 'reviews' come from there, not the storefront.
Ratings versions
Good move by Apple. I also would like them to show the version of the app that was current when the review was made. In reading them, many are complaining about a feature or bug that is fixed in the current version.
Good move by Apple. I also would like them to show the version of the app that was current when the review was made. In reading them, many are complaining about a feature or bug that is fixed in the current version.
It's not even that, it's people giving 1-star ratings for albums just because they don't like the band for whatever reason. It's definitely obvious who actually listened to the album and who didn't when you're on the other side of the situation.
I think this is great. I found the reviews to be much less useful than they could have been due to all the posts from people who had never tried the app, just posting to say they thought it cost too much, or that they didn't understand what the point of the app was, or whatever. Occasionally a non-buyer posts a useful comment pointing out some cheaper/better alternative, but overall, allowing non-buyers to review just made for lots of junk to wade through to find the useful reviews.
Good move. It's a thankless job, but it would restore some more sanity if Apple hired more review moderators to remove the quickly accumulating useless and often downright offensive comments.
That app is already on your iPhone - just launch Safari and go to macrumors.com...
Seriously, though, a custom RSS client for latest news would be doable, though not that useful - there are already many RSS clients for iPhone, and the website itself works just fine on the iPhone.
Building a vBulletin app for the forums, on the other hand, would be a huge and painful undertaking. If you're willing to pay $19.99 for such an app and you have several dozen thousand friends who'd do the same, I'm sure Arn will be interested...
That app is already on your iPhone - just launch Safari and go to macrumors.com...
Seriously, though, a custom RSS client for latest news would be doable, though not that useful - there are already many RSS clients for iPhone, and the website itself works just fine on the iPhone.
Building a vBulletin app for the forums, on the other hand, would be a huge and painful undertaking. If you're willing to pay $19.99 for such an app and you have several dozen thousand friends who'd do the same, I'm sure Arn will be interested...
Don't forget that you don't necessarily have to write a review to provide a rating. You are always asked to give a rating when deleting an app and I am guessing a large number of users do this instead of actually writing a review.
Perhaps it has to do with this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_average
Not sure if it's implemented in this particular rating system, but it's fairly commonly used.
Win.
I'm so sick of seeing those 1 star "hey can this app do this" 'reviews' and ESPECIALLY the 1 star idiots who say "THIS APP IS TOO EXPENSIVE".
Good job apple, just a few months short.
I'm so sick of seeing those 1 star "hey can this app do this" 'reviews' and ESPECIALLY the 1 star idiots who say "THIS APP IS TOO EXPENSIVE".
Good job apple, just a few months short.
Yeah i agree, if you didn't buy the app then why leave a review, good move by Apple.
But such reviews have ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with this app! All they're doing is talking about a different app. If they download the other app for free then they can give it a 5-star rating.
If they've bought the purchasable app and also downloaded the free one then I guess they can review both.
I have Star Trigon for the iPod nano. Does that mean I should review the iPhone version even though the interface and display are completely different?
And why shouldn't someone who's only played the awful Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man not review the iPhone version?
Because it's not the same game.
I have Super Monkey Ball for the Wii so why shouldn't my review count? Oh well, I guess there goes my moments of fame.
This was probably a low priority task that was shuffled off to some intern. Good job Skippy the intern!
there is no difference at all, you are right. i was always wondering why i'm not allowed to rate zelda for N64 although i played zelda on my gameboy all day long.
It's not the same for apps. It's tough luck if you used an app on someone else's phone and liked it... you don't own an iPhone and thus your opinion is just going to not be counted.
You can hear music everywhere from the radio, tape, cd and unless people started commenting on the quality of the iTunes MP3 files themselves, then it's valid to say "song XX by XX is great/crap because..."
I hope you're joking. The game has the same name but it's different. You can draw comparisons, but to say that Sonic unleashed is good because you played Sonic 3 - you'd be very, very, very wrong.
Bad move for customers, good move for apple as this will enable more positive reviews hence (possibly) more buyers, but for customers to limit the opinions for whatever reason is bad. Also, the example of counter attacks by developers is not really valid since they will cancel each other out presumably so why should the customer care? It's not like one app is going to be universally attacked by developers and another isn't, these bad reviews are going to be coming in from developers in almost the same ratios hence they shouldn't affect overall customer satisfaction.
Also, where has apple seen this before? DOES AMAZON FORCE YOU TO BUY A BOOK TO REVIEW IT? No, it takes your word for it. Why ? Because a positive or negative review can be as biased or as wrong/irrelevant by someone who bought the book/app as that by someone who didn't. Buying the app is no guarantee that all of a sudden you develop good judgement to rate the app in a helpful way. Also negative comments are most of the time the most useful because they have to focus on what is lacking in the app so most of them do contribute in forming a bigger picture of what the app is about and what it doesn't do, while positive ones DO NOT realy have to go into specifics other than mentioning how good the basic functionality is, so usually they are not helpful.
ASK YOURSELF WHAT REVIEWS ARE MOST HELPFULL, POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE ONES? OF COURSE IT'S NEGATIVE. AND APPLE LIMITING THESE FOR WHATEVER REASON MEANS MORE $$$ SALES TO THE APP STORE FOR THEM LESS INSIGHT INTO THE APP. FOR US.
Also, where has apple seen this before? DOES AMAZON FORCE YOU TO BUY A BOOK TO REVIEW IT? No, it takes your word for it. Why ? Because a positive or negative review can be as biased or as wrong/irrelevant by someone who bought the book/app as that by someone who didn't. Buying the app is no guarantee that all of a sudden you develop good judgement to rate the app in a helpful way. Also negative comments are most of the time the most useful because they have to focus on what is lacking in the app so most of them do contribute in forming a bigger picture of what the app is about and what it doesn't do, while positive ones DO NOT realy have to go into specifics other than mentioning how good the basic functionality is, so usually they are not helpful.
ASK YOURSELF WHAT REVIEWS ARE MOST HELPFULL, POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE ONES? OF COURSE IT'S NEGATIVE. AND APPLE LIMITING THESE FOR WHATEVER REASON MEANS MORE $$$ SALES TO THE APP STORE FOR THEM LESS INSIGHT INTO THE APP. FOR US.
Where does it say Apple removed only the negative reviews? Don't you think they removed the positive ones too? What about all those "OMG best app ever this is sooo cooool!!!" 5 star reviews from people who haven't actually used the app but once used it on a different platform or have seen a couple of screenshots and think it looks nice?
I think you're reading too much into it.
agreed - this finally makes sense to remove possibly erroneous reviews - esp since the strength of the product can depend on those reviews for future purchases and thus revenue. kudos, apple.
F
fishcove
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Now if they could just figure out a way to remove all those 5 star ratings that are obviously posted by the developer themselves.