Apple “misleads” users to improve app rating

Writer: look, published November 21, 2021 if 09:06 – to reply

One of Apple’s standard apps suddenly noticed its app rating skyrocketing. Not normally.

An apple It tries to position your iPhone in such a way that you don’t need almost any third-party apps anymore. You can listen to music through Apple Music, you can use apps with iMessage and you can control your smart devices at home with Apple Home. The problem with this is that people often prefer third-party alternatives. For example, you often listen to podcasts via Spotify, how often do you use the Apple Podcasts app?

bad rating

If the answer is “not often”, it could be for a number of reasons. One notable reason may be that the app has a rating of only 1.8 stars in the App Store, which should be considered as a manufacturer Warning: Your app is not working. This is often complained about during the review: the basic features that a podcast app should have these days, can’t be found anywhere in Apple’s Podcasts app.

manipulated

However, the app’s rating for Apple’s Podcasts app suddenly improved dramatically, averaging 4.7 stars. Has Apple completely improved the app and is it now a serious alternative to Spotify, for example? That would be very fair so the answer is “no”. Apple has more or less manipulated users to increase the rating of their apps.

Rule

Apple has created a popup requesting a rating between one and five stars. However, this notification is so integrated into the app that users seem to think they’re reviewing the podcast and not the app itself. The App Store is brimming with four- and five-star reviews as nothing is mentioned about the app, but podcasts are listened to (which aren’t even mentioned). This is how users think they rate podcasts, but in reality they guarantee that an Apple app that has an app rating of less than two stars suddenly gets nearly five stars based on thousands of reviews.

All this has been reported before the edge They also have a response from Apple. They say that “there is nothing special about it: since iOS 15.1, we have given users the ability to give app ratings in iOS apps. You can also turn this off.” The notification users receive hasn’t been found (yet), but it seems clear that users don’t fully understand what they are evaluating. Since Apple apparently designed it a bit misleading, do your research. So you can no longer blindly trust Apple apps.