If I read one more whiney review about price...

[echeck]

...I'm going to go crazy!

I am so tired of reading app reviews that do nothing but complain about price!!

The price has NOTHING to do with the quality of the application! I want to know if Scrabble is still crashing, not how you don't feel it's worth $9.99!

I wish Apple could go through and delete the "reviews" that just complain about the price of an app.

Seriously, I think I'm getting App Store Rage. *deep breath*

And for the record, yes I do appreciate the irony of me creating a thread to whine about whiners.

 

[dukebound85]

...I'm going to go crazy!

I am so tired of reading app reviews that do nothing but complain about price!!

The price has NOTHING to do with the quality of the application! I want to know if Scrabble is still crashing, not how you don't feel it's worth $9.99!

I wish Apple could go through and delete the "reviews" that just complain about the price of an app.

Seriously, I think I'm getting App Store Rage. *deep breath*

And for the record, yes I do appreciate the irony of me creating a thread to whine about whiners.

i was about to say... lol

 

[Spongey817]

And for the record, yes I do appreciate the irony of me creating a thread to whine about whiners.

I was going to post about how I hate people making threads about the review process.

Then I read this, and you made my day.

Thank you

 

[queshy]

yeah, i think the reviews need to be moderated. most of the posters are 8 year olds complaining about the price of the app for their IToUCh lol.

 

[echeck]

I wonder how difficult it would be to have the reviews moderated?

Or perhaps an approve/disapprove process where someone actually reads the review and determines if it would be helpful or not.

I don't even mind the reviews that point out a free version of the same thing. Or the ones that say that the app isn't worth the price because... and go on to give reasons. What bugs me to no end are the ones that say:

"YoU WANt $$$$ foR THaat??!?!!"

or the reviews that say:

"This app is totally gay"

Seriously, I've seen three different reviews (from three different people) that have said that!

Ridiculous.

 

[ivtecDOu]

or stop the developers from rating own app

 

[nfg315]

or stop the developers from rating own app

they should do a thumbs up/thumbs down system, where you can rank reviews - like digg - so the bad reviews/comments get pushed out

 

[DeaconGraves]

they should do a thumbs up/thumbs down system, where you can rank reviews - like digg - so the bad reviews/comments get pushed out

THEY DO. It's called "Did you find this review helpful?"

While I agree that some people could find a more tactful way to complain about price, it is ABSOLUTELY a fair review to give your opinion on whether something or not is worth your money. Anyone perusing the reviews is likely trying to determine whether to plop down money for the app anyway!

Go read any review site, Cnet, Consumer Reports, ZDNet, etc. They ALL factor in the price of the item. I've defintely read reviews before where someone will say "If this item was more expensive, it would not be worth the purchase, but you get what you pay for." or "You can get a similar item for $100 less from [insert company here]."

Reviews are SUBJECTIVE. Sorry that they can't be all happy-go-lucky "I love this app!" But to create a fair review process you have to let all of them in (or at least ones that don't violate TOS agreements).

You have a brain, it can filter content on its own, just skip past the one's you don't find helpful. (It's not like, if Apple took down all the bad reviews, the one's you wanted would suddenly appear out of nowhere).

 

[jaseone]

THEY DO. It's called "Did you find this review helpful?"

While I agree that some people could find a more tactful way to complain about price, it is ABSOLUTELY a fair review to give your opinion on whether something or not is worth your money. Anyone perusing the reviews is likely trying to determine whether to plop down money for the app anyway!

Go read any review site, Cnet, Consumer Reports, ZDNet, etc. They ALL factor in the price of the item. I've defintely read reviews before where someone will say "If this item was more expensive, it would not be worth the purchase, but you get what you pay for." or "You can get a similar item for $100 less from [insert company here]."

Uhm... Those sites all actually use the product before reviewing it, nobody is saying price can't be a factor when writing a review but rather complaining when people write reviews like "This game looks okay but I think it should be only $0.99 at $2.99 it is just too expensive for me to want to buy" and giving the game one star. That is the main kind of thing that is annoying people about the broken review system.

 

[DeaconGraves]

Uhm... Those sites all actually use the product before reviewing it, nobody is saying price can't be a factor when writing a review but rather complaining when people write reviews like "This game looks okay but I think it should be only $0.99 at $2.99 it is just too expensive for me to want to buy" and giving the game one star. That is the main kind of thing that is annoying people about the broken review system.

And again, I ask, you can't exert the small amount of energy to look past that review and on to one that does help you?

I wish Macrumors would filter out all the people complaining about the iPhone data plan who don't have an iPhone. But instead, I just skip those threads. Same thing.

 

[mdragoni1]

THEY DO. It's called "Did you find this review helpful?"

While I agree that some people could find a more tactful way to complain about price, it is ABSOLUTELY a fair review to give your opinion on whether something or not is worth your money. Anyone perusing the reviews is likely trying to determine whether to plop down money for the app anyway!

Go read any review site, Cnet, Consumer Reports, ZDNet, etc. They ALL factor in the price of the item. I've defintely read reviews before where someone will say "If this item was more expensive, it would not be worth the purchase, but you get what you pay for." or "You can get a similar item for $100 less from [insert company here]."

Reviews are SUBJECTIVE. Sorry that they can't be all happy-go-lucky "I love this app!" But to create a fair review process you have to let all of them in (or at least ones that don't violate TOS agreements).

You have a brain, it can filter content on its own, just skip past the one's you don't find helpful. (It's not like, if Apple took down all the bad reviews, the one's you wanted would suddenly appear out of nowhere).

While I'm all for using what brain cells we have left, I do think the review system should be revised. As you have said, any intelligent conversation regarding a product will mention the price. But, what I find most annoying are the reviewers who post and complain about how they will not buy the app because of its price. I vote for Apple requiring a transaction number with a review.
I'm all for reviews but I think that Apple's current review system without a check against those who never bought the product yet still feel the need to complain is flawed. I don't think that a "fair review process" requires letting in those users who never bought the product. Most producers aren't stupid, they don't need to be told if their app is too expensive if indeed it is, their sales records will tell them what the consumers think.

 

[DeaconGraves]

While I'm all for using what brain cells we have left, I do think the review system should be revised. As you have said, any intelligent conversation regarding a product will mention the price. But, what I find most annoying are the reviewers who post and complain about how they will not buy the app because of its price. I vote for Apple requiring a transaction number with a review.
I'm all for reviews but I think that Apple's current review system without a check against those who never bought the product yet still feel the need to complain is flawed. I don't think that a "fair review process" requires letting in those users who never bought the product. Most producers aren't stupid, they don't need to be told if their app is too expensive if indeed it is, their sales records will tell them what the consumers think.

As I've stated many times before, the only problem I have with requiring a purchase/download to place a review is that it shuts out people who may have demoed/used the app elsewhere.

While I haven't used apps on other people's iphones before, I have been over to friends houses and seen movies, played games, used tvs/game consoles/blu ray players/etc. All without making a single purchase. Am I not allowed to have my opinion be heard?

I will cocede the fact that this example does not apply to oh, at least 90% of the reviews that people are griping about. But I'm of the opinion that it is better to let too many people in then shut out even a few people who may actually be helpful.

 

[Small White Car]

It needs to be like YouTube where reviews can be condensed and re-expanded.

The app store already asks "was this review helpful." Just let me hide and show or sort reviews based on those nubers! That's all it needs: "Sort by helpfulness."

I don't agree with removing comments, but there should be better ways to let me browse them than simply "by time."

This solves the problem of "have you used it or not." A review can say something like "I played this game at a friend's house and I have to say I would never spend $1 on it." If other readers judge that "helpful" then it still comes up. If I says "Everything should be free!" then I will probably get rated lower by other readers.

 

[ayasin]

I think this could easily be solved by just not having the stars unless you've bought the app. Then people could post whatever they wanted without affecting your star rating which is all people see initally.

 

[plumbingandtech]

I think this could easily be solved by just not having the stars unless you've bought the app. Then people could post whatever they wanted without affecting your star rating which is all people see initally.

Yes!

 

[Night Spring]

It needs to be like YouTube where reviews can be condensed and re-expanded.

The app store already asks "was this review helpful." Just let me hide and show or sort reviews based on those nubers! That's all it needs: "Sort by helpfulness."

The app store does have a "sort by helpfulness" function. And yes, it would be helpful to have a function to selectively hide reviews -- I don't mind occasionary skimming over unhelpful reviews, but right now, they tend to outnumber helpful ones, and since only a set number of reviews are shown on a page, it gets tedious loading page after page hoping something useful is onn the next page.

 

[Dimwhit]

I think we need to mobilize as many Mac users as possible to go to apple.com/feedback and for the iTunes app (because they don't have one specifically for the iTunes Store), ask Apple to only allow people to review apps they've purchased/downloaded. I think it would solve most, if not all, of the problems with the review system.

Maybe if 10,000 Mac users complain and make the same suggestion they'll actually do it. Not like it wouldn't be insanely easy to do.

 

[HarryKeogh]

The price has NOTHING to do with the quality of the application! I want to know if Scrabble is still crashing, not how you don't feel it's worth $9.99!

So you're saying you don't find reviews that say "boycott Scrabble because they killed Scrabulous!" helpful?

 

[ucfgrad93]

I agree that the reviews need to be better implemented. Personally, I'd love to see only people who actually purchased the application be allowed to review it.

 

[echeck]

While I haven't used apps on other people's iphones before, I have been over to friends houses and seen movies, played games, used tvs/game consoles/blu ray players/etc. All without making a single purchase. Am I not allowed to have my opinion be heard?

I totally agree with you here, but I feel the lesser of two evils would be to only allow those that have purchased the product review it.

There's no perfect solution, but in my opinion this would be the best.

Someone said that we shouldn't allow developers to review their own products. If we were to do this then we would have to disallow them from reviewing any competing products so as to not slander them.

It's a broken system, but who has the best solution?

 

[aphexii]

I agree that ONLY people who have purchased the app should be able to review it. Its really unfair to the developers to have these "kids" come on and just bitch about the price without even giving the app a shot.

I've also started to see the ever annoying 'First' post comments that are even more useless.

Also, the ignorant comments about foreign language apps get me riled up as well. If its not in english and you can't figure out what it does, don't worry about it and just don't download it or rate it.

 

[ninjapenguinart]

My question is. . . how come my parents didn't buy me 300 dollar toys when I was a little kid! But seriously there should be a drop down menu that asks what kind of review it will be, that has the selections of I own it or I don't own it or I have used it on someone else's iPhone/iPod Touch. That way we can easily filter it out on our own, because is taking long enough to let good apps pass through as it is.

 

[echeck]

My question is. . . how come my parents didn't buy me 300 dollar toys when I was a little kid!

Obviously your parents didn't love you.

I don't see the review process changing at all. There is no way they could change it to make everyone happy.

It's just too bad because a lot of people shop by review (myself included), and I'm afraid there are quite a few top notch apps that are getting voted down because of idiots complaining about price.

 

[TimothyB]

Obviously your parents didn't love you.

I don't see the review process changing at all. There is no way they could change it to make everyone happy.

It's just too bad because a lot of people shop by review (myself included), and I'm afraid there are quite a few top notch apps that are getting voted down because of idiots complaining about price.

Yeah, don't think it can be fixed without to many compromises, and lucky we have it at all and the helpful rating system. Only option is to have it so no one can write a review unless they bought it, and only then can they can they complain about price. Or get the whole review submission out of iTunes and send an e-mail to the buyer asking for a review by clicking a link given.

I'm glad at least when an App is updated it gets listed as new so everyone will see it again, especially if an app got lost due to false bad reviews initially. And it has to be a great incentive to the developer to get bug fixes out so their app gets seen more.

Just said in another thread. A non-buyer gave a $5 app, which had production quality and plenty-o-features, a bad 2 star rating because there happens to be a similar, and half-baked, app for a $1.

Forget that $1 app has problems, like too small to read and less features. What makes it more sad is that the $5 app has a free Lite version that's probably better than the $1 cheap app. Go figure.

 

[meagain]

I don't even read the reviews. I go to YouTube and watch the app in action.
There was someone ranting about Muslim religion being violent in the iQuran or whatever it was - app.