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Help Combat Poor Reviews

In my previous post I wrote about some of the social problems with AppStore reviews up to this point. Craig Hockenberry followed up with his own suggestions for how to revamp the review process.

I have little faith that a solution will come from Apple in the short-term. iTunes’s review system looks to be built around a single foundation for all types of content: music, movies, apps, etc. Building a more complex system for developers will take time.

A better short-term solution would be for the more thoughtful people in the Mac community to take it upon themselves to write fair reviews of the applications they are using. I took a half hour this evening and wrote about several of the applications I am a fan of on AppStore. Not only does it help to counterbalance the 1 star pricing reviews, but I think it also gives the developers some thoughtful feedback on what I think works and what i think they should improve on.

If you’re using apps from AppStore, take some time over the next few days and follow suit with your own review bonanza. It’s the least we can do to try and put a temporary band-aid on the situation.

There Is No Such Thing As A Useful Review

Since the launch of the AppStore, many developers have commented on the low quality and misstatements given in several of the application reviews on the store: myself included.

One of the main problems with AppStore’s review system is the complete lack of filtering who can review a product. This has led to several price quibbles in the reviews that are appended with a lovely 0-1 star review. These people have never used the application they are reviewing mind you. Instead, they feel it is their obligation to let everyone know that $3 for an application that simulates drinking a beer is too much for their wallet.

I think I speak for most with half a pulse and a quarter of a brain when I say that I don’t need AngryTypingGuy1222’s commentary on the pricing of an application to help me decide if the application is worth my $3.

This isn’t something that is new to AppStore. If you surf the comments on a post on TUAW or Ars’s Infinite Loop, many times people will quibble over an application not being worth $x without even downloading and using the application. The same holds true for MacUpdate and Versiontracker. It’s a rare occasion that I actually have found a useful commentary on my products from any of these sites in the past few years. They seem to have fallen prey to the Diggtardification of the Internet: snarky, one line quips that have little substance and no value.

If I want to know how my products are faring with the general public, I find the most passionate and helpful users are the ones that email me directly, use the secondgear Satisfaction forum or write a blog posting about the application. These people tend to take more time to think out their commentary and critiques. The problem with this, however, is that they are usually not the first thing a potential customer sees. Instead if it:

1 star. This app is overpriced for what it is. YOU FAIL.

One thing AppStore does get right is that it shows users the most useful reviews on the product’s main page. In many cases these are fairly accurate assessments, but it still doesn’t feel like enough to curtail the underlying problem of unfounded reviewing.

What’s the solution? It’s obvious there needs to be a better way of rating products in the store. For paid applications, I think a prerequisite should be downloading the application to publish a review. This will definitely curtail the lame price bitching reviews because the person isn’t willing to toss a few bucks down just to bitch.

The biggest thing missing, however, is the ability for a developer to respond to a review. One of the best ways I have found to do proactive customer service is to actually respond to people’s concerns directly online either via a follow-up comment or a direct email. There doesn’t seem to be an easy way to do that with AppStore.

The store is in its infancy, and I think Apple will come to realize that the way they handle content reviews for music and movies isn’t necessarily the same as for iPhone applications. That said, there is only so much Apple can do to alleviate the issue. The underlying problem is that as a society we have replaced thoughtful commentary with snark.

In other words, society: EPIC FAIL.

Today 1.2.2 Released

I realize it’s iPhone day, but Today 1.1.1 and a subsequent 1.2.2 were released this morning. The main changes are some tweaks that will make people outside of states using the German and French localizations happy.

Download Today

The 1.2.2 release is really making me think about sticking with Subversion because of its suck-ass merging tracking support. There has to be a better way to do this.