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Review system is frustrating to developers

A

amousa

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 7, 2008
16
0
So my friend and I just started a small company on the side -- all our own money to get things going, our own time (lots of it) on top of our day jobs and we built two apps, one of which is finally on the App Store now. The point of this isn't to advertise that App so I won't post a link unless someone wants to give it a shot. Anyway, it's a shoutcast App and it costs 3 bucks. That's half the price of Tuner (a great app!) but also less features than tuner because some people might just want to add their favorite stations from shoutcast.com (our target audience is that segment of users). Why is it that someone (who hasn't purchased our application) can say something so useful like:

"Why buy this when Flycast Mobile is free and much more powerful."

To me, they're not comparable -- our App lets you add your own stations and the other lets you listen to some set selection of stuff. That's not our market and I would hope the people who were fine with Flycast would simply save their money and get it instead..but why can someone give our App a 2 star review when they haven't even tried it?

My other gripe is simply that this person must not have read the description, where we say we're open to user feedback about our applications -- give us constructive comments and we'll be glad to make them better for our customers.

Anyway, that's my rant. :(

Edit: for the record we had version 1.1 to Apple for review literally hours after a couple of users made some suggestions and found a minor bug or two.
 
J

jmmo20

macrumors 65816
Jun 15, 2006
1,165
102
only people who bought the app should be allowed to comment or review it.. it's absurd anyone can leave their comments.
 
G

gillybean

macrumors 6502a
Jul 21, 2008
788
2
Seattle, WA
You could just write your own review, e.g. "This app is great, blah blah blah, to the previous reviewer who mentioned Flycast Mobile - this app is better than that because blah blah blah ..." and then get your friends to rate your review as helpful so that it shows up first.
 
A

amousa

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 7, 2008
16
0
gillybean said:
You could just write your own review, e.g. "This app is great, blah blah blah, to the previous reviewer who mentioned Flycast Mobile - this app is better than that because blah blah blah ..." and then get your friends to rate your review as helpful so that it shows up first.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I thought of that but I didn't want to do that or have friends do it because there's an obvious bias since I wrote the app. You know what I mean? I'd rather real users did their thing -- I just wish Apple would at least make it so people who had downloaded the App could post a review, not some random fool who goes out of their way to crap all over one's hard work.
 
D

diesel

macrumors 6502a
Aug 3, 2007
807
25
i posted a thread on this way way back in regards to the concept that only purchasers of an app should have the ability to leave a comment for the app due to all the ridiculously ignorant reviews being left by people. Incredibly enough, there were quite a few people who thought otherwise. they thought that it was a great thing for anyone to leave a review because it opened up the door for outside opinion......how that's good, i have no idea. i was quite surprised.

though i have to admit i did leave a scathing review for Tube London that i never purchased when it was released because i purchased Tube London City (made by same developer). They charged 9.99 for Tube London when it was a remake of Tube London City but with a different map overlay. It should have been part of their Tube London City app. So i had to warn potential buyers of this developer's practices. Though, if i couldn't leave a review for Tube London (since i didin't purchase it) i would have left that same scathing review for Tube London City instead (since I did purchase that one).
 
D

dougdawson

macrumors member
Aug 24, 2008
62
0
Austin, TX
gillybean said:
You could just write your own review, e.g. "This app is great, blah blah blah, to the previous reviewer who mentioned Flycast Mobile - this app is better than that because blah blah blah ..." and then get your friends to rate your review as helpful so that it shows up first.
Click to expand...

I can understand the desire of people to do that, but IMO it devalues the review process even more. It's such a conflict of interest. In our (tiny) company, we don't post reviews to our products. We don't let our friends and family post reviews to our products. We don't let our testers post reviews to our products, because they got them for free. Conflict of interest. We don't even review other potentially competing products that we BOUGHT. Again, conflict of interest. We'd like to think that karma counts for something. If that hurts us, we at least know that we did the right thing.

Doug
 
A

amousa

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 7, 2008
16
0
megatronbomb said:
Why does every developer feel the need to start a thread like this?

The "review" process is broken. This isn't exactly news.
Click to expand...

I suppose my hope is if enough people complain, Apple will do something about it. :)
 
Solver

Solver

macrumors 65816
Jan 6, 2004
1,230
3,205
USA
The system could work. "Bad" reviews, as decided by the voting public, should be move farther and father down the list of displayed reviews. Meaning if 1 out of 106 people found a review useful and there are say 300 reviews, then that review should never be shown in the top three. More like the bottom three.
 
calculus

calculus

Guest
Dec 12, 2005
4,504
5
When you put your product in front of the public you have to understand that not everyone will like it.
 
Beric

Beric

macrumors 68020
Jan 22, 2008
2,148
0
Bay Area
jmmo20 said:
only people who bought the app should be allowed to comment or review it.. it's absurd anyone can leave their comments.
Click to expand...

Completely true. That would eliminate at least half the junk reviews.

Apple also needs to require the version of the app reviewed, as well as the date reviewed, on the top bar of each review. A review is worthless without those two pieces of info, because a buggy version of an app made 2 months ago is completely different than a much later version of the same app, released last week, that works flawlessly. And yet there's no way to tell that simple piece of information from any of the reviews.
 
S

Strategy

macrumors member
Jul 13, 2008
97
0
Here's my suggestion:

Leave the reviews open to anyone but have iTunes flag the review differently if you bought the product along with an option to sort by "People who purchased this application"

This allows you to read all the reviews if you want but also to sort out the crap and only read reviews of someone who has bought and used the application.
 
A

amousa

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 7, 2008
16
0
Strategy said:
Here's my suggestion:

Leave the reviews open to anyone but have iTunes flag the review differently if you bought the product along with an option to sort by "People who purchased this application"

This allows you to read all the reviews if you want but also to sort out the crap and only read reviews of someone who has bought and used the application.
Click to expand...

I think that's reasonable as well
 
Beric

Beric

macrumors 68020
Jan 22, 2008
2,148
0
Bay Area
Strategy said:
Here's my suggestion:

Leave the reviews open to anyone but have iTunes flag the review differently if you bought the product along with an option to sort by "People who purchased this application"

This allows you to read all the reviews if you want but also to sort out the crap and only read reviews of someone who has bought and used the application.
Click to expand...

Why should Apple do that?

How could ANY review by a person who does not own the app be the SLIGHTEST bit useful?

Reviews should only be written by people who own the app. Period.
 
P

PatrickRS

macrumors member
Sep 14, 2008
81
0
I come from the Palm / Treo world. One time there appeared a new application house selling its wares in all the usual places... "9.95 Software". They got their name from the fact that all of their apps were priced at $9.95.

Turns out, many (all?) of their titles were repackaged freeware programs with absolutely no improvements / changes. I desperately wanted to leave a comment to potential buyers, warning them to go get the freeware instead of these bogus apps at ten bucks a piece. But, because I hadn't bought any of them, I couldn't leave a comment.
 
S

Strategy

macrumors member
Jul 13, 2008
97
0
PatrickRS said:
I come from the Palm / Treo world. One time there appeared a new application house selling its wares in all the usual places... "9.95 Software". They got their name from the fact that all of their apps were priced at $9.95.

Turns out, many (all?) of their titles were repackaged freeware programs with absolutely no improvements / changes. I desperately wanted to leave a comment to potential buyers, warning them to go get the freeware instead of these bogus apps at ten bucks a piece. But, because I hadn't bought any of them, I couldn't leave a comment.
Click to expand...


This is the ONLY reason I see for having open reviews.
 
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