
iOS and MacOS Developers Can Now Respond to Reviews - keehun
https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/content/releasenotes/General/WhatsNewIniOS/Articles/iOS10_3.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40017594-DontLinkElementID_39
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epaga
As a small indie dev (dealing with hundreds or thousands, not hundreds of
thousands of customers), the best way I've found to encourage reviews is to
prominently display my email address for any questions or ideas.

Then, when customers write (many of them do), I write back a nice response and
then add:

P.S. If you enjoy Mindscope, would you take a minute to write a short review?
It would mean a lot and helps give Mindscope visibility on the App Store.

~~~
anotherturn
I've done a similar thing, but getting people to review is like pulling teeth.

We've tried plenty ways to make this happen:

1\. append a footer in the email asking for a review Finding: People ignore
it.

2\. include custom copy in the emails asking for a review People say yes yes,
and then most do nothing.

3\. The annoying rate us with stars popup and redirect to appstore. People
rate 5 stars inapp, and then close down the AppStore before they apply a
rating

Getting reviews is hard for b2c - but the real issue at work is the amount of
friction AppStore imposes. I've tried to leave reviews and it asks me to re-
sign in to the AppStore, minimum character requirements (can't just leave 5
stars).

~~~
vbezhenar
I'm not sure about newer phones, but with iPhone 4S it took so much time to
load appstore, that I'm usually giving up. AppStore is very slow application,
it feels like bad website on 2G connection and I don't understand that.

~~~
masukomi
I can't decide if you're trolling people or you don't realize how amazingly
atypical your situation is. a) really old phone b) 2G connection. Yes
everything is slow for you, and yes, that sucks, but the iPhone world (and
phone networks) has largely moved on from that point. Asking for that stuff to
be fast is like asking for major web sites to perform well on dialup. even if
it _should_ happen, it isn't going to, and that's just the current state of
the world. Dev's don't think about the old devices or the slow connections,
and their employers don't care.

~~~
barnaclejive
Poster said "it feels like bad website on 2G connection".

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jordansmithnz
As an indie developer that has a lot invested in the App Store - this is
really, really, great. It doesn't matter how much effort you put into making
an app that is polished, well thought out, and one of the best out there -
there will always be reviews like 'App gets stuck downloading' or 'App doesn't
support x' (when x is clearly stated as being a paid addition). The ability to
respond to reviews should more clearly separate 'quality' apps for anyone that
takes reviews and ratings into consideration before downloading.

~~~
Humdeee
I hear you. I've had those experiences. I put in minimal usage analytics on my
backend, and the users that are the harshest with reviews are my biggest
users. It's all worthwhile when you get the occasional email from someone that
your app has helped them immensely with a task.

I make utility apps for some side income and one of the strangest reviews I
received was a 1 star -- "cannot beat level 6. Paywall. Deleted."

The moron somehow reviewed the wrong app, from some game. Apple however is
pretty good at responding to review removal requests.

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dcw303
It's a start but it doesn't fix the underlying problem. It's not specific to
the App Store, but a major problem with Internet based communities in general
is that a small vocal group of discontents has a disproportionately loud
voice.

5 one star reviews out of 100,000 known installs is very different to 5 out of
10.

I wish that the app review had stats for 1/2/3/4/5 star ratings as percentages
of the known user base.

~~~
TylerE
Please no. Then apps will only review nag even harder.

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codecamper
10 years & wow we can reply to reviews. I guess 4 billion in app store profits
can pay for a feature now & then.

Now how about tackling fake reviews?

~~~
draugadrotten
> Now how about tackling fake reviews?

From apples point of view, why?

If an app gets fake positive reviews, it will sell more, and give Apple higher
income.

If an app gets fake negative reviews, the developer will just bump the
version, the reviews will be forgotten, and there will be no negative effect
to Apple.

Like the old SNL sketch, Apple doesn't care. They don't have to.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHgUN_95UAw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHgUN_95UAw)

~~~
nicky0
Fake reviews devalue all reviews, and this makes them less trustworthy and
therefore less useful. And when customers can no longer make informed
decisions, they buy fewer apps.

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philliphaydon
Now if only I could write reviews... but there's a Long outstanding bug where
if you download an app in (in my case Australia) move to singapore, change
your store to singapore, redownload the app. The store assumes you don't own
the app cos it originated in Australia but your account is now singapore with
the singapore downloaded app. And you cannot write a review cos the store is
confused. But if the app is downloaded in singapore for the first time you can
write a review. Invest the store location again and the inverse happens....

~~~
planetjones
I have the same issue. And it's even worse. I need two accounts - one for the
UK and one for Switzerland. And I have to log out and log in of the app store
depending on whether I want a UK app or a Swiss app. For a multi-national
company, Apple's support for those living across borders is terrible.

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yoz-y
I really hope that it would be finally possible to use touch id to identify
myself when leaving reviews. I do not understand why reviewing seems to be the
most sensitive thing I can do on an iPhone, as it is the only feature that
always requires the whole password.

~~~
wvenable
To slow down review farms?

~~~
yoz-y
Dubious, you only have to enter your password once and then you can write
reviews for 15 minutes or so (I did not check). This only bothers people who
leave one review every now and then.

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tptacek
There's a business here for a consulting firm that triages first-tier
responses to these comments. This is already, for instance, how bug bounties
work (as I understand it, triage services are a big part of the revenue model
for the bounty sites).

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cpncrunch
Title is incorrect. It isn't going to be available until iOS 10.3 ships.

~~~
hellofunk
10.3 is on current new devices, so it takes affect now for all new iPhones and
iPads. Later, it will also affect existing ones.

~~~
neiled
10.3 is in beta and the first beta was released to developers yesterday. That
link is to pre-release documentation.

~~~
hellofunk
According to the article, if you purchase a brand-new iOS device, it is
running 10.3. That is different than existing devices cannot get upgraded yet
to it. Or is the article unclear?

~~~
huxley
No, you've misunderstood the phrasing, it says "which runs on currently
shipping iOS devices", in other words, it is compatible with.

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matheweis
Wow, this is great news! It's doesn't address all of the systemic issues with
the App Store, but it does show they at least are paying a little bit of
attention... here's hope that they're working on fixing more!

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rackforms
That's great news, and can only lead to, if nothing else, better informed
users and a more engaged developer.

~~~
nicky0
I'm not sure it is great news. I can see it leading to some users expecting to
use the reviews as a kind of alternative tech support/feature request forum,
with star ratings held in hostage for responses.

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Ensorceled
What 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 developer eating.

~~~
austinl
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 discontent
with the particular version. It's rare that people who have already rated the
app 5-stars will continually go out of their way to rate the app 5-stars again
without prompting.

~~~
kagamine
I'm tied to the Norwegian app store by bank card. Norway has a small
population resulting in the majority of apps having the "we don't have enough
reviews for this app" and no review data at all. Instead of showing reviews
from another country, or overall from all countries, Apple choose no data at
all. Really useful.

~~~
tehno
Same for Estonia, I don't think I've ever seen a review on Estonian iTunes app
store. Not a single one.

~~~
homakov
Wow, never thought of that. Someone must create an alternative web app store
that we can browse with aggregated ratings

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Rumudiez
Does anybody know what precautions or safeguards will be put in place to
prevent fraudulent self-ratings?

For instance, a malicious app could falsify the user data before submitting it
using the new API, dark patterns in the feedback form (1 star could be the
highest rating), or just omit sending in poor reviews altogether.

~~~
arjie
Don't they have a review process? Surely they'd just check all the places you
use the new API.

~~~
mhmiles
Yeah I’m pretty sure you’d have to use private APIs to be able to fake reviews
using the new controller. They’d probably ban your developer account if you
tried this. Don’t think it would be worth it.

~~~
mikeash
They have the ability to run views entirely out of process. I can't guarantee
they're doing it here, but I don't think it would be hard for them to make it
completely immune even to private API abuse.

~~~
tinus_hn
It'd be quite logical to do that here, if only to avoid exposing the users
account credentials to the application.

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localhost3000
I'm glad to see Apple beginning to throw developers a bone but this change is
about 5 years too late.

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jmcdiesel
Developers always want this - but responding to reviews hardly every works out
in your favor... its either a shallow "thanks" kind of message or a shallow
"sorry" kind of message... and it almost always comes off as disingenuous

~~~
nicky0
My thoughts exactly. This may or may not improve things.

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karmelapple
Any word on whether replies will be limited to one, or if you could have very
long threads of messages going back and forth between a user and the
developer?

Also, curious if developers will be able to respond to old reviews written
before this was the policy. I'm thinking so.

Been hoping for this ever since the App Store was released, especially after
being able to do it on the Google Play store for some time.

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DavideNL
So uhh... can users respond to developers responding to user reviews? ;-)

~~~
djrogers
Both users and dev can edit their reviews/responses. Seems reasonable, as
starting a multi-layer thread in reviews would ultimately defeat the
purpose...

~~~
DavideNL
i guess it's reasonable indeed. Although users being able to edit their
initial comment can become messy...

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archildress
Well, it's a start?

I know I'm not the first to stay it, but I'm still so shocked how limited the
Mac App Store is. No trial versions, no in-app purchases, no subscriptions,
etc. This has led to companies like Bohemian (makers of Sketch) [1] leaving
the Mac App Store.

I'm not being facetious when I ask people more knowledgeable than me: why does
Apple put so little effort into the store? Is it just too small to warrant
their attention? It just seems to me like they don't even try.

[http://bohemiancoding.tumblr.com/post/134322691555/leaving-t...](http://bohemiancoding.tumblr.com/post/134322691555/leaving-
the-mac-app-store)

~~~
flukus
Limited from a developer perspective but fantastic from a consumer one (except
maybe the trial version stuff).

~~~
Aldo_MX
Not so fantastic, because it resets the ratings every update, which translates
in developers constantly begging for stars...

~~~
keehun
I do agree resetting the ratings at every update is a big hassle. I wonder why
Apple doesn't have the reviewer determine whether or not the rating should be
reset. Perhaps that would introduce too much power to the reviewer(s?).

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anon363764
So now reviews will tend to self-censor and be glowing, happy-clappy rubbish.

Maybe Apple apps need an app dev <-> user support mechanisms for private
feedback, FAQ and bug tracker to funnel bitching productively.

~~~
qzervaas
No, it'll still be self-selecting:

Good developers who actively respond to reviews will improve their apps.
Somebody who left a low review due to a misunderstanding now has a chance to
increase their review because of a diligent developer.

A developer who doesn't care and/or doesn't monitor their reviews will not
turn that user around.

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chrisper
What does "currently shipping iOS devices" refer to? People who buy an iPhone
on the web store today will have iOS 10.3? I just checked on my iPhone and the
latest is 10.2.1.

~~~
dangoor
That means it's compatible with all currently shipping iOS devices. iOS 10.3
just entered beta, though, so it'll be a few weeks before it's the shipping,
released version.

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toodlebunions
When was the last time you browsed the App Store or read reviews?

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lnbharath
Would there be a second factor authentication? I'm sure developers would find
ways to abuse this

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ioquatix
It's about bloody time.

