Apple Removes 'Rate on Delete' for Apps in iPhone 4

[CFreymarc]

Ah, I will miss this great opportunity to rate down apps that are annoying, keep crashing and so on. But in the meantime, I'm on a jailbroken iPhone 3G. WHY WOULD I UPGRADE TO 4.0?!

If you run a jailbroken iPhone, IMO, Apple doesn't care about you.

 

[Xibalba]

You are skewing logic here...

If people delete the app as you say most likely don't like it, so they should be able to give it a low rating. Why is this skewing towards low ratings? The apps that are liked and not deleted, don't get bad ratings, but the ones that are deleted, get the bad ratings. If these apps were any good, they would not be deleted and they wouldn't be getting bad ratings? So, ultimately the good apps that are not deleted get the better grades, and those that do get deleted the worst.

I think this not only does not skew ratings, it rectifies them.

Yes and No.

Good apps will STILL not get the positive ratings by those that like them (no delete = no popup) and those that don't like the app will vote negative upon deletion. So you actually end up with more overall negative ratings for BOTH good and bad apps and that really skews ratings overall. One would then need to ascertain the relative negative votes on an app-by-app basis before determining if the app is one of quality.

Bottom Line - the removal of this pop-up will help ratings overall.

 

[Xibalba]

wait... If all of them were skewed then wouldn't none of them be skewed? Think about it.

only the apps that get deleted more frequently would be skewed - not all apps downloaded and installed. a user is not prompted to vote on an app until chosen to delete - thus this skews only those deleted - whether the app was overall good or bad. and people don't delete the apps they like...

 

[MacToddB]

I thought this popup was a great idea. People seem to have this idea that they're entitled to a 5 star rating unless they've done something to deserve otherwise. That makes it really hard to differentiate between well reviewed items. It's sort of like eBay, where the system is such that anything short of a perfect rating is considered to be completely unacceptable. I generally will not give 5 star ratings unless whatever I'm rating really did something to stand out, and by that scale, a 4 star rating becomes perfectly acceptable. Naturally, anyone who would get 4 stars under such a scale would much prefer an eBay-style scale where they would be indistinguishable from those that I would give 5 star ratings to.

In other words, as long as everyone is rated using the same scale, with the same opportunities for low and high scores, I see nothing to complain about.

That's the point. You admit earlier that your scale is different than others.

While a 5 star is hard for anyone to earn from you, a 1 star is hard to earn from me, especially for a free app. It's very subjective. If you're going to rate it, you should at least have to type the reasons for your rating. If you downloaded it because it was free, but it's a menstrual cycle app that does a brilliant job of it, but you're a single dude, should you rate it a one? With eBay, at least they do have optional follow-on questions. There should be a "Did the app work as advertised? Did it crash? Was it just not for you? Did you contact the developer for help? Were they responsive?" These should at least be displayed before you make a rating.

Don't get hung up on my example or questions... Choose your own. This rate-on-delete but not rate-on-repeated-use approach discourages giving away apps for free, plain and simple, because too many people will download an app just because it's free without any qualification first. For example, I've given away my 9,999 Ringtones Uncensored USA app for the past few days, and even those who write a review (I don't even get to see why others might rate it low on delete) complain because you can't use the ringtones on an iPod touch (duh!) and I say the specifics in the description, and how you can indeed use the ringtones on NON-Apple phones. But people see FREE and download. The description is never read.

 

[dscuber9000]

I think Apple needs to do something to encourage people to rate apps so the best apps stay in the spotlight, however this was clearly not the way to do it. Maybe in a future SDK update, allow some kind of in-app rating prompt?

 

[jonny]

didn't have time to read through all of the responses, but perhaps there could be a in-app ratings system that would be standard across all of them. As i'd love to give good ratings to the ones that stay on my phone as well...

 

[wittyalias]

Sure, bad apps have a lot of bad ratings because lots of people delete them, but this still skews ratings for good apps. Good apps will have fewer ratings because not as many people delete them, but those ratings will still be bad because chances are the people who do delete them still don't like them for some reason. When was the last time you deleted an app you really liked? Or even if you did really like it took the time to find it in the app store and leave it a positive review?

 

[tbrinkma]

You are skewing logic here...

If people delete the app as you say most likely don't like it, so they should be able to give it a low rating. Why is this skewing towards low ratings? The apps that are liked and not deleted, don't get bad ratings, but the ones that are deleted, get the bad ratings. If these apps were any good, they would not be deleted and they wouldn't be getting bad ratings? So, ultimately the good apps that are not deleted get the better grades, and those that do get deleted the worst.

I think this not only does not skew ratings, it rectifies them.

Moronic reporting by macrumors too, who take this biased view without any criticism. This does decrease overall ratings, but it doesn't skew them in any way. The good apps don't get deleted and don't get the bad rating, simple as that, the bad ones do, and deservedly so.

This is a bad move, because now, an app can be very unsatisfactory and it can be deleted by many iphone users, yet none of them will be prompted to rate it, and so give the negative feedback back to the community. Only if the user is really motivated, and the app is atrocious will they explicitly go to the app store and rate it...

Bad, Bad move, now all those third rate apps that we delete from our phones won't get a just low rating, and they will escape for some other poor schmuck to download unbeknownst to them.

Here's what you're missing...

With the rate-on-delete system, the people who *don't* like something are given proportionally more weight in the rating system than the people who *do* like it. How?

Picture the following scenario:
You have two apps.
100 people download and install each of the apps.
The first app is great and useful for a long period of time, all but 5 people love it, but those 5 people dislike it for some reason. They delete it and rate it low (1 star) because they didn't like it. This app has an average rating of 1 in the app store.
The second app is a quick app that only 50 people like, but which isn't useful for a long time. The majority of the users eventually delete it, and rate it accordingly. (50 x 1 star, 50 x 5 stars) This app has a rating of 3 in the App Store.

The first app has a much higher satisfaction rating (95%), but a much lower App Store rating. That's what devs don't like about the rate-on-delete system. (Sure, these are extreme examples, but relatively few people get around to rating apps directly through the app store, so the *vast* majority of ratings come from the rate-on-delete process.)

 

[Vitamin T™]

It never made sense to me

That option never made sense to me. How often have users deleted apps that they like... NEVER?

 

[manu chao]

The first app is great and useful for a long period of time, all but 5 people love it, but those 5 people dislike it for some reason. They delete it and rate it low (1 star) because they didn't like it. This app has an average rating of 1 in the app store.
The second app is a quick app that only 50 people like, but which isn't useful for a long time. The majority of the users eventually delete it, and rate it accordingly. (50 x 1 star, 50 x 5 stars) This app has a rating of 3 in the App Store.

If there is a class of apps that is polarising, people either love it or find it useless, then a system that surveys only (or mainly) the unsatisfied will give these apps lower ratings.
90% of the posts here just felt that the existing system was unfair, but they could not back it up with any reasoning.
(The second reason besides polarising apps are free vs. paid apps but as long as one compared within one category this did not matter.)
The problem even with perfect ratings in the presence of polarising apps that an average of four stars can indicate 75% five star and 15% one star or 80% four star and 10% each for three and five star.

 

[manu chao]

That option never made sense to me. How often have users deleted apps that they like... NEVER?

Which means that apps that everybody like received virtually no one star ratings and apps that sucked received a lot of one star rating. Sounds like a pretty easy to read indicator.

It seems people just find it 'unfair' if a good app 'only' has an average of three stars but as long as all other competing apps have a rating of less the three stars, three stars can mean the best app in its category.

 

[i-John]

Totally agree with this decision. If the function included the ability to post a meaningful opinion and back it up with examples (like a regular rating at the App Store would permit), that would be a different story.

I download lots of free apps and, if I delete them because it just wasn't right for me, it wouldn't be fair to post any sort of "rating upon exit".

That's why they had the "No Thanks" option. If you didn't want to rate it because you didn't think it was fair, then don't rate it.

I liked it. I think it would be nice to have it as an option to turn on or off on your account.

Developers of crap apps will love it because they will get less negative ratings. Unless it really sucks, I doubt the average user will take the time to go to the store to rate. Most will have wasted enough time on the app, why waste more time. A quick way to rate is a good option, gives an overall picture. I think the more ways that users of the apps can rate, it keeps developers on their toes to make better apps.

 

[cmaier]

Which means that apps that everybody like received virtually no one star ratings and apps that sucked received a lot of one star rating. Sounds like a pretty easy to read indicator.

It seems people just find it 'unfair' if a good app 'only' has an average of three stars but as long as all other competing apps have a rating of less the three stars, three stars can mean the best app in its category.

Except that people who keep the app rarely go to the trouble to rate it, so whether the app is good or bad, it gets a disproportionate number of 1-star reviews.

 

[KJ500]

Too bad.

I enjoyed giving bad ratings to the crappy apps.

 

[manu chao]

Except that people who keep the app rarely go to the trouble to rate it, so whether the app is good or bad, it gets a disproportionate number of 1-star reviews.

And what is the harm if all apps get a 'disproportionate' number of 1-star ratings?

Definition of disproportionate:
too large or too small in comparison to something else

If all apps get a large number of 1-star ratings, the number of 1-star ratings any given app gets is not too large in comparison with any other app as all apps get the same treatment, it is thus not 'disproportionate'. It is only too large in comparison to what you would consider a fair rating (or a rating you would expect with perfect sampling). It is only disproportionate if you compare the average ratings of all apps in the appstore with those on different platforms (eg, Amazon book ratings).