No where near as much as I used to, but when I learn about an app through a podcast etc I do briefly check the reviews. As a dev the AI summary idea scares me a bit because sometimes the reviews can be very unreasonable (we received one for our app a few weeks ago that accused us of destroying the person's life because we wouldn't give them a refund for a subscription despite us doing so).
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iOS 18.4 to Include AI-Generated Review Summaries in App Store
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
This is the One for Sonos app:
Review Summary - Users say the app is convenient and easy to use. They praise its sound quality and appreciate its customization options. A few users also like that it supports older products. However, a few users are frustrated with its performance.
Wow, that’ll be … horrible. I mean App Reviews have not been hugely heplful in recent years with all the astroturfing. But now AI will hide all the rough endges and make everything look wonderful and shiny, even if it’s trash. Is Apple trying to make alternative AppStores appealing or something?
Thing is, those original reviews were accurate and they seem to have gotten ahold of the spam problem for most listings.
App Store has neither of those things going for it. The vast, vast majority of reviews are extremely low quality or misleading.
For example Audible is rated 5 stars. It’s a ****ing awful app. But if you read the reviews, almost every five star review is for the BOOK THEY WERE LISTENING TO.
Best approach to App Store reviews for me has been to simply toggle by recent. Apple seems to deliberately bury bad reviews otherwise.
Let’s hope this turns out to be an improvement but considering their track record with both reviews and AI summaries, I’ll wait and see.
Actually I think the opposite is true. Currently in the App Store arranges reviews by 'Most Helpful' as the default, which can be biased (who rates negative reviews as useful?) or gamed (I have my suspicions about a few apps in which a 5-star review is always rated the most helpful, despite it being atypically positive and uninformative). I presume the original reviews will still be available, as they are in other stores, so we will always be able to dig deeper than the AI summary. AI also gives the possibility of customised reports summarising reviews, say including only those over a certain time period, or finding out what a common comment was on 1-star reviews.
I usually go for LATEST REVIEWS. Only way to know if the developers turned their app to crap. Stuff like 1passowrd, FantastiCAL and so forth. Google Photos is recent. Now they want FULL ACCESS for you to be able to see your photos.
Great example of completely useless data
Why anyone would want that or think that’s useful to make a decision is beyond me
I have to notice that while Apple has stylistically been replacing the term "user" with "person" for several years (including in the developer documentation for this feature!), the generated review uses "user."
Useless because most reviews are fake so the average will be 5-starts praising the app. No matter how much of a scam.
Not in decades, Apple ruined the joy that was the early app store discovery experience
I read reviews occasionally, and submit reviews when I have a great or terrible experience. I think these summaries are a great idea!
I've only recently started to appreciate summaries in Mail, Messages and Notifications, but they'll never replace my reading of the original text. Just gives me a "warming up" of what's to come.
And of course these summaries are generated on server-side, not on-device. That would just be silly and wasteful to do this on each user's individual devices. Millions of devices summarizing the same set of reviews? Uh, no. 🙃
Could it, maybe, possibly, just be a user issue? Not pronouncing words clearly? Maybe?
Transcriptions will only get better over time as "context awareness" improves. The same word can have very different meanings in different contexts, so awareness of the context can help the transcription feature auto-correct itself. "Oh, he probably said this word instead of that word, based on the context".
What has this got to do with iOS 18.4?! Reviews are generated on the store and should be available on any version of iOS App Store app, no?! It’s not like the AI in the iPhone is pulling in all the reviews and creating the summary. I don’t need special version of Amazon app to see their AI generated reviews.
Seems overkill for games. They’d be better off just hardcoding “full of ads and will bleed your bank account dry if you buy the in-game currency” at the top of every “game” on the App Store.
Fake reviews should be tackled too. The sheer volume of nonsense reviews on many apps reinforces dead internet for me. Given the natural trend of negative review bias, I find it hard to believe a million people are rating Word highly. Similarly, the reviews for match three games written by children are probably not an accurate data set.
There's a lot of confidence right there in comparing Amazon's AI abilities to Apple's. You're a bolder man than I.
Cause reading the actual review is so time consuming. Good grief. These AI selling points are pretty silly.
Not sure why you're assuming that. AI review summaries on Amazon don't work that way, for example.
It's just a matter of using a weaker transcription model. They need to use a better one.
Frankly, given how much money they make, it is very frustrating that they don't have transcription that is at least as good as what Android users have had for many years. It's not acceptable.
Last edited:
