I was recently on a 6 hour flight. I pulled out my iPhone 6+ to get some writing done. However, the I app use to write on long flights like this one crashed (it shall remain anonymous). It just wouldn't start.
Oh, huh, I thought to myself. Okay well, better the app crash than my plane. I'll just do some reading instead. So I tried to open the Kindle app, but it crashed too -- hundreds of dollars worth of unaccessible books. There might have been other apps like this on the flight but at this point I gave up because those were the only two apps I intended to use.
After landing I was able to determine both of these apps were trying to display a "Rate Me" dialog. Not being connected to the internet during this is an edge case that neither the little, independent developer nor legions of Amazon app developers had considered and tested. (The independent developer confirmed my suspicion and has submitted a fix already. No word from Amazon yet, doubt there ever will be.)
Setting aside the crash issue, there appears to be no way to know before buying an app that it is going to nag you, nor is there a setting in Preferences to shut these nagware dialogs off.
I understand why positive ratings are important to developers, that the app store ratings are heavily weighted for complaints, and that the whole system is lacking some fairness. On the other hand, as customers that's not our problem and the burden of correcting/balancing the issue shouldn't be placed on us. Beside the potential for crashes, these dialogs are an attempt at gaming the somewhat broken rating system. They are also unexpected and annoying for a paid and supposedly premium app. I feel Apple should ban app submissions that employ this practice and anything else that tries to compel or coerce customers into rating their titles.
Oh, huh, I thought to myself. Okay well, better the app crash than my plane. I'll just do some reading instead. So I tried to open the Kindle app, but it crashed too -- hundreds of dollars worth of unaccessible books. There might have been other apps like this on the flight but at this point I gave up because those were the only two apps I intended to use.
After landing I was able to determine both of these apps were trying to display a "Rate Me" dialog. Not being connected to the internet during this is an edge case that neither the little, independent developer nor legions of Amazon app developers had considered and tested. (The independent developer confirmed my suspicion and has submitted a fix already. No word from Amazon yet, doubt there ever will be.)
Setting aside the crash issue, there appears to be no way to know before buying an app that it is going to nag you, nor is there a setting in Preferences to shut these nagware dialogs off.
I understand why positive ratings are important to developers, that the app store ratings are heavily weighted for complaints, and that the whole system is lacking some fairness. On the other hand, as customers that's not our problem and the burden of correcting/balancing the issue shouldn't be placed on us. Beside the potential for crashes, these dialogs are an attempt at gaming the somewhat broken rating system. They are also unexpected and annoying for a paid and supposedly premium app. I feel Apple should ban app submissions that employ this practice and anything else that tries to compel or coerce customers into rating their titles.
