iOS and MacOS Developers Can Now Respond to Reviews

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Re: iOS and MacOS Developers Can Now Respond to Reviews

#221

Post by SomeCallMeTim » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 11:51 PM UTC

developer2 wrote: post #206

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Your problems with Apple are not my problems as a user. My problems with Apple are exactly your problems as a user. If you want the apps that don't ever ask for reviews, then search past the first 100 that show up. Almost no one does. You'll find them there, because they don't rank at the top of the results. Guess how much money those apps make? Not enough to pay for development. It's a power law distribution. At th…

>> Guess how much money those apps make? Not enough to pay for development. It's a power law distribution. At the top of the search you can make a decent living. It's unlikely and rare for an app developed exclusively for native iOS, with no existing user base built on desktop or physical business presence in the real world, to ever have a chance of succeeding. The fault for misguided expectations lies entirely with…

> If you're depending on people to "discover" your app without having ever heard of you, then you are choosing to gamble and attempting to game a system that every other gambler is trying to game right alongside you.

Bingo! All the popular indie apps that don't use every possible strategy to get to the top of the heap will fail.

By choosing the top rated apps in the top 20, you are playing the same game. If you don't like indie apps, don't download them. "The only way to win is not to play." You don't like that game, play a different game. Don't hurt the many, many developers who are in fact making a living making apps.

And don't spite them just because they're living the dream of earning a full time income working as their own boss from home and it's what you'd like to be doing.

>The App Store is a cesspool of every developer who figured out how to install XCode acting like they automatically deserve to win the windfall lottery.

I don't disagree, but it also has some very nice apps. If you think an app really sucks, by all means slam it in the reviews. It's a service to other people who may download it.

But I'm complaining about people rating apps they otherwise consider to be 4- or 5-star apps, and that they then vote down to 1-star because they're pissed about being asked to review. That's lying out of spite, is hurting a developer who otherwise did a good job on their app, and is uncool.

Re: iOS and MacOS Developers Can Now Respond to Reviews

#222

Post by SomeCallMeTim » Mon, Jan 30, 2017, 2:17 AM UTC

detaro wrote: post #159

jclardy wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this. If an app asks "Do you like this app?" and you get a negative response why is connecting them with real human customer service to figure out their problem a bad thing? Apple is the third party in this interaction. The app itself is an extension of your own business, so why should Apple be the arbiter of everything? I get it if you are pretending to be Apple and have a similar star rating/review form…

And if you don't complain about anything and say you are happy, the restaurant doesn't immediately try to get a benefit from that by handing you a tablet and saying "please leave a yelp review now". And if they did, you probably would complain.

I've had restaurants ask me exactly that, after asking whether I was happy, and no, I wasn't pissed. I like the restaurants in question. Heck, I've had my dentist send me an email asking me to rate them.

When you live in a world where reviews can make or break your business, of course you're going to do whatever is possible to encourage good reviews. There's too much riding on it, and too many jerks out there that will rate you 3 stars or less because you weren't exactly right for their needs (or tastes in the case of a restaurant). Because people are going to just not go to a restaurant that rates a 3 star average, and they mostly won't download an app with a 3 star average.

A little bit of reality here: You can't always make everyone happy. You just can't. And because people who are unhappy are something like 7x more likely to leave a bad review than people who are happy, you pretty much have to encourage people who are happy to leave reviews. In other words you have to game the system just to have an accurate review profile.

EVERYONE games the system, even if you don't realize that. Asking for a "fake rating" and then sending them to make the real rating is the obvious way to game the system, and it clearly troubles some people. A far more subtle approach is to just wait for someone to use your app several times over a week and then ask them to rate it. Anyone who's using it that much probably likes it. Halfway in between could be the app that asks you if you're having any problems before asking you to rate it.

But really it's just a matter of degree, and it's life in the app ecosystem, and even in restaurants and other domains today. Railing against it is like railing against the tide.

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