Comments on: Rate It If You Hate It!

By: Adam S

Adam S — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 11:21:30 +0000

There needs to be some sort of review system if they are going to do the stars. Just doesn’t make sense from a design standpoint. If you want accurate information you don’t design to only find out from people that don’t use it. You need to find out from people that do use it and why. Just bad design.

By: Marc

Marc — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 20:39:38 +0000

@Venky: Only problem Venky is that they don’t solicit reviews – just star ratings. This really doesn’t tell us anything useful at all. And as I said, when they don’t solicit GOOD reviews, only the bad ones go up – it’s lopsided.

By: Venky

Venky — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 08:46:53 +0000

Hi,
I dont think so bad about it. Apple is asking users who are not satisfied about a product rate it. You can take all those inputs to modify your code. Specify clearly in your app description that ur apps were corrected and modified. If your following reviews are looking better, your app would feel mature and advanced.
All this only if your survive the bad reviews. Gotta have some money for marketing expenses to survive.

By: Well the ratings are in… | Steili.com

Well the ratings are in… | Steili.com — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 05:16:17 +0000

[...] all positive, and some are downright rude, but unfortunate reality of the App Store is that (as Iliumsoft wrote) Apple really has designed the rating system to make it super simple for those who “hate it [...]

By: Adam Talcott

Adam Talcott — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:22:06 +0000

You saved me from writing a blog post myself. This is a major flaw in the App Store’s rating system, and it’s responsible for all the apps that have a rating of two stars but four- or five-star raves in the reviews. I think Apple could learn a lot from Amazon.com in this regard. Perhaps send an e-mail to users asking them to rate their recently installed applications? This should be made as easy as possible for users to do either on the iPhone or on the Web.

By: Kevin White

Kevin White — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:27:06 +0000

I see a smaller problem with Rate It If You Hate It: the star ratings.

I’m a good user; I actually pick a rating if I’m uninstalling, even if it’s a program I liked (but don’t use.)

I usually rate software like 1 star – bad software. 3 stars or the middle option: it’s fine, nothing awesome, I maybe didn’t like it but it’s an okay program. 5 stars or 4 stars: I really like it and it’s cool.

I would rather see a “did you like this app or not?” kind of rating for uninstalling. I’ve uninstalled a lot of apps because I just didn’t really see a use for them or I found a better app, but I still liked them. I’ve also uninstalled apps that were useless or badly designed.

Having to formulate an actual opinion on a scale of 1 to 5 is much harder than saying, “didn’t like it.”

However, that doesn’t solve the problem that Marc’s whole post is about, it just lessens it. Maybe.