
Apple pulls all customer reviews from online Apple Store - minimaxir
https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/11/21/apple-pulls-all-customer-reviews-from-online-apple-store
======
rgovostes
The only thing remotely surprising here is that they lasted this long. It was
frankly idiotic of them to have it there in the first place. No one is happy
to spend $80 on a replacement MagSafe charger because the previous one frayed,
so of course the listing was marred by 1-star reviews.

The community Q&A also tends to be garbage. I understand that the average
consumer is not going to have the same level of technical knowledge, and so I
don't fault them for asking the questions. But it seems very strange that
Apple allows their product page to be polluted by often confused questions,
and also allows random people to answer those questions instead of qualified
salespeople.

~~~
derefr
I think whoever originally architected the Apple Store website assumed that,
because the Store carried _a few_ third-party products on it alongside
Apple's, it would end up evolving into a full marketplace where people would
comparison-shop between different third-party offerings of the same product.
In such a use-case, reviews and ratings would be useful.

Of course, that didn't wind up happening; the Apple Store website has
basically exactly one product in each product category, with that product
being a third-party one only if Apple themselves don't make a product for that
category. There's no comparison-shopping to be had, and so no justification
for reviews or ratings.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Now there I can't agree. If I were a first time potential Apple buyer, outside
the Apple bubble, I would _absolutely_ want to know if Apple's own charger has
a cheap cable that frays, or a video dongle can't handle certain common modes,
or something is simply crap. Comparison with a third party doesn't enter into
it. It might even help get a feel for how common an issue some site's major
news piece actually is.

Likewise a 2017 Macbook Pro attracting lots of negative reviews because Apple
forgot how to make a keyboard resilient enough to outlast a warranty are
equally legitimate.

Pulling them to present an "all is lovely in Apple World" view is incredibly
buyer hostile. Even if many remain that are irrelevant complaints and
misunderstandings - where there should be some effort to clean up, there is
legitimate need for ungamed, unsanitised reviews and ratings.

~~~
core-questions
> I would absolutely want to know if Apple's own charger has a cheap cable
> that frays

Of course, but why would Apple want you to know that before you shell out the
cash?

> "all is lovely in Apple World" view is incredibly buyer hostile

They're laughing all the way to the bank.

~~~
harry8
Because now everyone can refer to Appke as dishonest and be exactly correct.
"Don't believe apple's lies, their quality is awful, they know it and lie
about it. Pulled all the reviews from their customers who found that out at
their own cost." Difficult for Apple to argue with that without looking even
worse.

Sometimes being honest about your faults enhances both your reputation for
integrity and quality. Honesty really can be your most profitable policy.
Especially when you charge a premium for quality.

Apple are a huge tech company. Apple are being very arrogant. Historically
that has been a time to sell.

------
projektfu
It boggles my mind why Apple doesn't have any engagement at all with the
community. Their community Q&A is full of questions like "How do I play
notifications through the phone speaker instead of bluetooth speaker" and the
answers are just community members with the same problem, also wondering how
to do it. Zero engagement from Apple.

~~~
musicale
I kind of wish they'd deploy a posse of geniuses to support.apple.com to
address some of the more prominent issues with thousands of "I have this issue
too" upvotes.

~~~
asveikau
This leads to an interesting, possibly reusable turn of phrase: _a few
geniuses short of a posse_.

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mmanfrin
I've found the reviews on a brand's own store page to be next to useless. The
whole page is meant to sell me on a product, why would I trust "reviews" that
are likely curated? Although, if I do find negative reviews on a retailer's
site, it does engender some trust.

~~~
kps
Many ‘accessory’ products had overwhelmingly negative reviews, because Apple's
form-over-function philosophy means that they're genuinely hot garbage.

… so they fixed the glitch.

¹ e.g. one I'm familiar with
[http://web.archive.org/web/20191113224149/https://www.apple....](http://web.archive.org/web/20191113224149/https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MRW22LL/A/61w-usb-
c-power-adapter)

~~~
IAmEveryone
Apple may choose form over function, but the power adaptors are a good example
of how they still spent more time thinking of function than any competitor.

For the typical "elongated black box" notebook charger, a cumulative sum of
exactly zero effort was spent on improving it in either form or function.
Meanwhile, Apple had MagSafe (which is nothing _but_ function), the extendable
prongs to wrap the cable, or the little clip to fix the cable into place. Both
Apple and non-Apple adaptors usually have detachable cables, but for the non-
Apple variety it's only purpose was to streamline internal processes to
provide country-specific plugs, whereas Apple used the opportunity to allow
the adaptor to be used with a long cable or a cable-less plug.

Their adaptors are also smaller and lighter, both Watt-for-Watt and even more
so considering competitors often choose overpowered adaptors because they
happen to be cheap to procure or they already use it and want to keep their
inventory simple. And if you search, you'll find that semi-famous deep dive
examine the inside of one of their adaptors, and how they are spending at
least twice as much on components to safely isolate the high- and low-voltage
sides and provide constant quality at any level of power draw.

But yeah, the cable fraying sucks.

~~~
carlob
All you say was kinda true for the magsafe ones, I recently saw the adapter
that comes with a new macbook air:

\- no little clip anymore

\- no long cable anymore

\- not the smallest Watt-for-Watt anymore (the new GaN ones are smaller)

\- and of course: no magsafe anymore...

But I'm sure that three years from now they will have the "courage" to go back
to their older superior design.

~~~
MultusSalus
They’ve managed that courage for their keyboards now.

------
theincredulousk
Unsurprising, given the (now very old) issue of selection/hidden-information
bias in voluntary reviews. The people that are happy with the product are
exponentially less likely to leave a "review" than the people that are
unhappy, including outright trolls. The whole vibe that creates is not very
"Apple".

In fact I'm not sure the problem has ever been "solved" \- raw sample size of
reviews is helpful, but nowhere near eliminates these biases.

How could it even be improved further in theory? I think you'd at least have
to incorporate the number of total products sold into the review rating. If
there were 10 terrible reviews on a product with 1,000,000 sold, that means
something very different than one with 20 sold.

Baseline though, dealing with people, it will probably never be perfect unless
the reviewers have "skin in the game". People with positive experiences need
some incentive to leave reviews that is as compelling as the negative
experience. Lots of Amazon sellers offer some kind of free product or coupon
in their follow-up emails - maybe that works?

~~~
adambyrtek
You underestimate the tricks online marketers use to source positive reviews.
I guess Apple just cannot be bothered to game them since their success is not
dependent on their contents.

One example is the classic dark (or at least grey) pattern many mobile app
use: Showing a popup with a question whether you enjoy the app or not. If you
don't then you are asked to send private "feedback" by email. If you do then
you are encouraged to leave a public (likely positive) review and redirected
straight to the app store.

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scarface74
_By removing the reviews, it 's possible that Apple will be seen as less
credible to potential buyers._

How could anyone disagree with this. Just look at Amazon for a shining example
of reviews done correctly. They are always so credible, never gamed, and you
never have to worry about fake products especially if you buy products labeled
as “Amazon’s Choice”.....

~~~
asveikau
I have sometimes had amazing smiles and laughter reading amazon reviews. It
tends to remind me that people are pretty diverse in their lifestyles and
opinions. When sizing up a product, that gives nothing at all of value: _this
guy hates it, but seems slightly crazy; this other one loves it but what do
they know?_ So I just have a good laugh at how different these people are from
each other, and likely from me, and make gut decisions based on pretty much
nothing anyway.

~~~
zipwitch
When reading online reviews anywhere, it's always fun to see what fraction of
1-star reviews are "this sucks and/or readily fails at what its supposed to
do" versus "I'm using this wrong".

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LeoPanthera
I'm not surprised. Most of them were just bitching about Apple, and not
reviewing the product. Most of the reviews of the USB-C dongles were just
complaining about USB-C, for example. Useless.

~~~
ignoramous
> _Useless._

Isn't it on Apple to assign resources to fix the problem instead of going
nuclear on it? Surely, not all reviews are useless?

> _Most of the reviews of the USB-C dongles were just complaining about USB-C,
> for example._

I've seen this problem with PlayStore too, but Google takes forever to delete
the reviews: Even the ones that are unrelated. I wonder why AI isn't employed
to weed out or help automate the process of flagging such reviews. May be
someone should build it?

~~~
chrisseaton
> Surely, not all reviews are useless?

What am I going to do with the review? If I need a new Apple charger then I
need a new Apple charger. I’m not going to read a review and decide not to buy
it am I? It’s useless noise.

~~~
bdcravens
This assumes only one product that meets your needs.

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jlarocco
I honestly suspect Apple's completely lost without Steve Jobs and instead of
innovating and building quality products they're pivoting into a fashion
symbol and trying to push their margins as high as they can and eke out as
much money as possible before people realize what's going on and abandon them
in favor of better, cheaper alternatives.

~~~
asdff
The most painful part is the overtness of the money grubbing from apple, a
trillion dollar company. Dongle tax, mandatory touchbar, base storage and
memory stuck in 2012, extortion tier upgrade pricing, and the hardware falls
apart if you look at it wrong.

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8bitsrule
This is nothing new for Apple; back around 2007 it removed the complaints of
hundreds of iMac owners that regions of their display screens were failing, a
year or two after purchase.

I was one of those owners (the hard drive had already failed). Last straw for
me. GrrrApple.

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tus88
Why _any_ website puts review and rating on their own website has always
amazed me. It seemed to start happening during the social media frenzy of the
mid-2000s, and really should have gone away by now.

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noodlesUK
I genuinely think that USB-C (the connector) has a huge problem, and I’m
pretty sure most of HN knows it. Users everywhere expect that physically
compatible plugs in normal consumer devices imply some degree of
comparability. Unfortunately because we use USB-C (the connector) for almost
every imaginable kind of interconnect these days, most devices have a
complicated matrix of things they will and won’t support, and so do cables. I
don’t know how users are expected to become educated about this. “Why won’t my
display work when I plug it in using x cable, on y single, but will work when
I use z cable on q dongle” is such a common question I hear, and I don’t know
how to explain it to people other than just to use trial and error. Apple
needs to come up with some way of at least commonly labelling things to imply
compatibility if they don’t want to confuse and alienate people. I am aware it
isn’t just Apple with this problem, but USB-C (the connector) is perceived by
most Apple users as an Apple thing.

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LeicaLatte
Do it for my apps on the App Store too, Apple.

~~~
fdsa_8866
Came here to say that. Unless you're bringing an already popular product into
the store or have a large marketing budget, you're really at the mercy of the
handful of people who seem to live to give bad reviews. It's even _worse_ for
a free product, which suggests that it's a % of people who have nothing better
to do.

So, you either try to push through it or buy reviews -- and risk getting
kicked out of the store entirely.

Reviews are 33% of the reason I shut down my app biz. (And then 33% dealing
with the college dropouts in the review department and 33% for taking 33% for
making my job _harder_ than it would be without their help.)

Cutting out reviews _would_ be helpful for probably everyone but the top 1%.
It would certainly make it less of a shit show for most developers.

~~~
twobat
How would a large marketing budget solve the issue with the people that "live
to give bad reviews"?

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langaaegeskov
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/11/22/apple-s...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/11/22/apple-
says-its-app-store-is-safe-trusted-place-we-found-reports-unwanted-sexual-
behavior-six-apps-some-targeting-minors/)

this article used app reviews as its source, maybe apple didnt like that. I
dont know if the timing makes sense though...

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musicale
I liked the reviews and am disappointed that they removed them.

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classified
> By removing the reviews, it's possible that Apple will be seen as less
> credible to potential buyers.

That ship has sailed. Who still expects things to work as advertised?

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supernovae
This probably has more to do with Google algo changes and de-ranking user-
generated content than anything else

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doggydogs94
It should be clear that this is a USB-C specification issue and not just an
Apple issue.

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salvagedcircuit
3,2,1... Apple uses COPPA as explanation of why comments removed.

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oneepic
Good, more sites should do the same. Customer review systems tend to just get
abused and paint a confusing picture. That said, I still wish we could give
customers a good way to share feedback at least somewhat publicly...

------
mikece
Darn! Some of those were pretty funny... though when they contradict the
prevailing reviews at Amazon it's obvious that allowing comments on Apple.com
just invites the trolls.

