Would there be a second factor authentication? I'm sure developers would find ways to abuse this
iOS and MacOS Developers Can Now Respond to Reviews
81–90 of 222 posts
Re: iOS and MacOS Developers Can Now Respond to Reviews
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please don't give an app a 1 star review just because they ask for a review. Apple and Android have made ratings incredibly important, and the vast majority of happy users never take the time to review. You get some happy users rating, and a disproportionate number of unhappy users. Asking people (at an appropriate time) is the only way to level the field. We've had a few 5.0 releases of our iOS app, but usually a fe…
When an app nags me for a review, it really gets in the way and hinders my usage of it. A bad review is a totally legitimate response to that. If this is your only solution to biased reviews, then you have no solution, you just have a way to move the problem around some. If you don't want silly one-star reviews complaining about the prompt, don't interrupt people when they're trying to get something done.
>>When an app nags me for a review, it really gets in the way and hinders my usage of it. A bad review is a totally legitimate response to that.
Sure, so subtract one star from your regular review. A one-star review is a grossly disproportionate and unfair response.
I mean I hate being nagged as much as the next guy but let's face it: the only reason these apps are begging for reviews is because Apple store discoverability sucks.
Re: iOS and MacOS Developers Can Now Respond to Reviews
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's an unfortunate cause of excessive app rating prompts — what's shown in search results/top charts/other areas is the average of the latest version, not the overall aggregate. If you're at a company that does scheduled releases (e.g. once every three weeks), you'll need to continually ask people to review the app to keep that rating high. Otherwise you only get ratings from new users and users that are disconte…
FYI, some people rate apps down when the apps beg for for reviews like that.
austinl's comment:
> If you're at a company that does scheduled releases (e.g. once every three weeks), you'll need to continually ask people to review the app to keep that rating high.
implies that the best response to such antisocial behavior is to give any pestering app one star. They're mining this dark pattern for publicity.
Re: iOS and MacOS Developers Can Now Respond to Reviews
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trivially avoidable by having an App based prompt instead of directly calling into the AppStore UX.
With this new API in place, I guess they will forbid your from asking for reviews elsewhere.
How does that work? How can Apple prevent douchebags from calling the new API from a modal "Do you love my app? No / Not yet" dialog?
Re: iOS and MacOS Developers Can Now Respond to Reviews
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
With this new API in place, I guess they will forbid your from asking for reviews elsewhere.
How does that work? How can Apple prevent douchebags from calling the new API from a modal "Do you love my app? No / Not yet" dialog?
Simple: By rejecting apps which do that.
Re: iOS and MacOS Developers Can Now Respond to Reviews
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
As mentioned further up, it's brutally difficult without anything like this. The App Store shows ratings for only the current version by default so after you slave over each upgrade, you lose all the great reviews you've carefully collected. Those ratings are critical to your success in an already difficult marketplace. Almost no one goes out of their way to review your app, so the majority of reviews you'll get are…
I understand that that is a bad position for developers to be in, but is that the user's problem? Also assuming users showing this behaviour are evenly distributed across apps, didn't this end up not mattering?
It becomes the users' problem when app development becomes unsustainable due to serious difficulties like this. If you're a good developer playing a clean game, you will lose out to more aggressive developers.
Personally I don't think it ends up not mattering because you get better results with the dark pattern people have outlined - ask how they feel about the app, then route positive people to review, or negative people to a feedback form.
Just sucks when someone rates your entire app 1* because of a single, small decision made, despite you having made great decisions at every other point.
Re: iOS and MacOS Developers Can Now Respond to Reviews
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
When an app nags me for a review, it really gets in the way and hinders my usage of it. A bad review is a totally legitimate response to that. If this is your only solution to biased reviews, then you have no solution, you just have a way to move the problem around some. If you don't want silly one-star reviews complaining about the prompt, don't interrupt people when they're trying to get something done.
>>When an app nags me for a review, it really gets in the way and hinders my usage of it. A bad review is a totally legitimate response to that. Sure, so subtract one star from your regular review. A one-star review is a grossly disproportionate and unfair response. I mean I hate being nagged as much as the next guy but let's face it: the only reason these apps are begging for reviews is because Apple store discovera…
> A one-star review is a grossly disproportionate and unfair response.
If it was an isolated incident sure. If someone cold calls me then I'm going to say "sorry, I'm not interested", but if you're getting 10 calls a day then the response changes. It's a constant problem and I'm willing to lash out at anyone I see making it worse.
As much as we blame it on the app store, we see similar behavior with subscriptions on a heap of websites.
> I mean I hate being nagged as much as the next guy but let's face it: the only reason these apps are begging for reviews is because Apple store discoverability sucks.
Or just not create apps if apple aren't creating a viable platform. It's not something that should be left up to the app developer or the users.
In fact, I'd rather app stores themselves were responsible for review prompts, it would provide better sampling.
Re: iOS and MacOS Developers Can Now Respond to Reviews
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
With this new API in place, I guess they will forbid your from asking for reviews elsewhere.
How does that work? How can Apple prevent douchebags from calling the new API from a modal "Do you love my app? No / Not yet" dialog?
Apple does static binary analysis + manual testing of apps before release. It's the same way they can prevent you from charging money for things without going through in-app purchases and Apple's 30% cut, or even from showing a website that lets you purchase things without going through in-app purchases (this is why, for instance, Kindle for Android lets you buy books and Kindle for iOS doesn't).
Re: iOS and MacOS Developers Can Now Respond to Reviews
#89What I was really hoping for is a solution to the problem of every app begging me for a review after upgrading. I get a "please review" popup pretty much every day. When I got back from Christmas vacation and synced a bunch of apps, my iPhone was painful to use for about three days and every app begged for my help. I actually review apps I use and like, I just wish I didn't have to do it every update to help keep the…
One iOS app I used to use (Baytomat) offers to reward you with credits (normally purchased for money) if you write a 5 star review. This seems like it should be a blatant violation of Apple's App Store policies, but there is no easy way for me to even report it to Apple. Very frustrating.
I've been APNS spammed by Yelp, Lyft, and Etsy, and by reading the guidelines, they should be removed from the App Store for this. No way to report that either.
Re: iOS and MacOS Developers Can Now Respond to Reviews
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to Gruber / Apple it's a max of three prompts per year, regardless of version. https://twitter.com/gruber/status/824022727870861316 [UPDATE] There's also an App Store setting so you can disable requests: https://youtu.be/_qA5p9dQGas?t=2m40s
Trivially avoidable by having an App based prompt instead of directly calling into the AppStore UX.
If you use your own prompt in order to try and show it to users who have chosen not to see the built-in one, then you're just asking for bad reviews. People who don't want to see your prompt don't want to see it. Why would they give you a good review if you're bugging them to do something they explicitly chose not to do?