I don't have any issues with the podcast app so I went ahead and gave it a 4-star rating (not 5 because that takes a particularly special app to earn that rating from me) to balance out the 1-star ratings some in this thread will give it out of spite.
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New Apple Podcasts Rating Prompt Artificially Boosts App Store Score
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That's what people have been saying about Apple since 1984...
Considering they completely ****ed him over and Sherlocked his app he has every right to be pissed off at Apple
"Customers have been increasingly unhappy with the Podcasts app since iOS 14.5" wait what? I last tried it in iOS 14.4.2 and the way it downloads podcasts to listen offline (especially on the Apple Watch) was pretty confusing. More than once I was offline and what I wanted to listen was not actually cached. The "already listened" status for episodes also doesn't seem to sync properly.
You're telling me they made it even worse after that?
You're telling me they made it even worse after that?
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I’m confused. Where are the fake reviews? Isn’t it just that along with people rating the app, some people are deciding to provide a review of a podcast (or podcasts in general )? Makes sense since without a rating prompt people have to go in search of the rating option meaning they are probably a bit more savvy and probably have something to complain about. Vs a prompt more likely to get people less savvy who don’t know it means just about the app and not podcasts, and since it’s a prompt less likely to be a negative review. Apple I assume is using the same prompt as everyone ekes and they are just lucky it’s a reader type app where it’s main feature is third party content. It’s probably less common in other podcast apps because unlike podcast app which is installed by default the others are aimed more towards savvy users who want more features or such. Not sure what people are expecting people to do differently in regards to this prompt. That all said, hopefully this attention does cause them to make improvements to the app. All the images are so massive vs like Spotify where things are much more compact on the Home Screen and lots of room for improvement feature wise but have tried the other third party apps and always find myself coming back to this one
So has anybody actually seen the shady, sketchy prompt what does it say that's manipulative?
The podcast app is free. So what if it gets a fake 5 star rating. If you don’t like it, use something else.
I'm glad to hear I'm not alone in thinking the Apple podcast app sucks. I guess I should spend some time looking into alternatives since I do listen to quite a few podcasts.
This is not surprising. Most people won’t rate anything, food or otherwise, unless it’s horrible or great. And most don’t go out of there way if it’s good to rate it. Now the people that don’t have a problem with it, are getting asked “do you like this” and a lot would probably say yeah, it’s not bad. So I’m not surprised that the rating went up, after asking many more people(17,000 more). Apple would fake the reviews as it would be to easy for them to get caught.
Exactly. Went from 1000 reviews to 17000 reviews
As soon as I heard that every rated it so low I went and gave it 5 stars. Its not 1 star bad.
I hate haters.
I hate haters.
Would be pretty strange if it wasn't the top result for "podcasts," considering Apple's app is actually called "Podcasts"...
Apple has no shame anymore.
Tim Cook needs to go.
Tim Cook needs to go.
Personally, I just give any app that decides to block whatever I was trying to do with a rating request popup an instant 1 star. Best part is, the popup disappears just as quickly.
As a UI/UX designer and developer, I think this is hilarious. I highly doubt this was unintentional.
Why is this artificial? Before maybe only people who hated it were voting. Now maybe the score represents more of the average opinion. That’s not artificial that’s the law of large numbers.
Read the article. An overwhelming majority of the positive written reviews are about specific podcasts, not the app. The fact that so many people seem to think they're reviewing a show rather than the player indicates that Apple's implemented a very bad review prompt.
Even if the prompt was clear as it can be, I think it would still raise the rating because the loudest voices when it comes to reviews tend to be the ones complaining. Like look at yelp.
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Did you read the article or just the headline? Cos you've missed a pretty important detail.