Apple Now Lets Customers Rate and Review Pre-Installed Apps on the App Store

guest · Sep 30, 2021

Apple Now Lets Customers Rate and Review Pre-Installed Apps on the App Store
September 30, 2021
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/09/30/app-store-rating-pre-installed-apps/

Apple now lets users rate and review pre-installed iPhone apps on the App Store, such as Maps, Podcasts, Mail, and others, bringing the company's apps to parity with how users criticize and/or applaud third-party apps on the platform.

Spotted first by 9to5Mac, Apple now lets users leave a zero to five-star rating for a number of its pre-installed apps, further enabling users to write their reviews. At the time of writing, the Podcasts app, which has faced a flurry of criticism, has a 2 out of 5-star rating out of 156 reviews, with other Apple apps varying.
By opening up its apps to ratings and reviews, Apple and its teams are now better able to receive more direct feedback for individual apps on ‌‌iPhone‌‌ and iPad.
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This move also helps cover some potential concerns from Apple's competitors, who could have previously argued that by withholding ratings and reviews for pre-installed apps, Apple was being anti-competitive.
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guest · Oct 27, 2021

Apple now lets you review more default apps like Phone, Messages, Photos and Safari
October 27, 2021
https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/27/a...t-apps-like-phone-messages-photos-and-safari/

Now, Apple has opened up a few more first-party apps to the App Store for ratings and reviews, including the Phone app, Messages, Photos, Safari, and others.

The change was first spotted by developer Kosta Eleftheriou, who has been a prominent figure in pushing for App Store reforms, particularly on the matter of App Store scammers.

Apple just added more of their built-in apps on the App Store, which you can now rate & review: https://t.co/x3PoRpu80k pic.twitter.com/HylTXYOcRp
— Kosta Eleftheriou (@keleftheriou) October 27, 2021
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Citing Appfigures data, Eleftheriou noted a number of Apple apps have now become available to rate and review with iOS 15.1. This includes several default apps, like Clock, Phone, Messages, Camera, Photos, Apple Health, and Safari. It also includes Apple Watch-enabled apps like Workout, World Clock, Find Devices, and Heart Rate. (Users on iOS 14.x may be able to see the apps, but won’t be able to rate and review them, he noted.)
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It will be interesting to see how well these apps hold up as more people discover they can rate and review Apple’s default apps. Hopefully, by opening themselves up to consumer feedback, Apple will be motivated to make the changes users want to see in these built-in apps, and get alerted earlier to possible bugs as they arise.
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guest · Nov 20, 2021

Apple just provided the perfect example of why you can’t trust App Store review scores
Apple Podcasts rises above bad reviews, but at what cost?
November 19, 2021
https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/19/22791968/apple-podcasts-star-score-review-prompt

You [***] off people by somewhat breaking your app, and they’re leaving angry reviews. How can you salvage your reputation? Apple just found one incredibly effective way — get listeners to submit better reviews by interrupting their podcast experience with an in-app prompt to submit a rating.

That’s how the Apple Podcasts app went from a publicly embarrassing 1.8-star score all the way to 4.6 stars in a little over a month without any actual fixes, as developer and App Store watchdog Kosta Eleftheriou points out. And it’s still going up: according to AppFigures data, the app has been getting thousands of ratings every day since November 9th, with the vast, overwhelming majority of them issuing a 5-star score.

How did “Apple Podcasts” suddenly go from 1.8 to 4.6 stars? Is Apple manipulating their own app ratings now? https://t.co/bSAr8sFKqQ pic.twitter.com/5kJKYd54VP
— Kosta Eleftheriou (@keleftheriou) November 17, 2021
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The app has made it to 4.7 stars overall as of this writing and is firmly the No. 1 App Store search result for “podcast.” It looks far more desirable to a new user than it might have before.

If you think there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for this, you might be right — it could definitely be that people who bother to submit reviews tend to be angry, and a lot of people who love Apple Podcasts and never bothered to look it up in the App Store (remember, it’s preinstalled!) are finally balancing things out.
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Apple confirmed to The Verge that it’s using a new prompt but claims it’s nothing out of the ordinary.

“With iOS 15.1 released last month, Apple Podcasts began prompting listeners to leave a rating and review just like most third-party apps — using the standard Rating & Review prompt available to all developers,” wrote an Apple spokesperson who agreed to comment if they were not named.

But intentional or not, standard or not, the problem with star scores is there’s no way to tell whether they’re legitimate. We don’t know if someone pressed a five-star button because they loved the app, or thought they were rating the podcast itself, or just wanted to close the prompt as quickly as possible.
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