iPhone 2.2 Asks: "Deleting that App? Please Rate It!"

by Ben Wilson

We've already reported on iPhone OS 2.2 enhancements, which include Google Street View, Bus Schedules, viewing walking and transit directions instead of driving directions, and the ability to share locations with other users.

Now a Greek language website, iPhone Hellas, is reporting that when a user decided to delete an App from their iPhone running OS version 2.2 an application popup window is displayed asking them for feedback about the App they are deleting. The user is presented with the familiar five star iPod rating system and a "No Thanks" button. Uses can swipe their fingers to select from none to five stars pressing the "Rate" button to send your rating while the other button opts you out of the rating system.

Topics:: Applications

Tags:: iphone,; iPhone OS 2.2

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Add a Comment (Log in or register) (11 Comments)


by ceejayoz October 28, 2008 8:34 AM PDT: Won't this lead to artificially low ratings?

People who didn't like an app enough to keep it would get an easy, instant prompt to rate - and likely rate it poorly - but the satisfied customers have to seek it out on the App Store again and go through the process there.; Like this Reply to this comment


by jerrodh October 28, 2008 8:59 AM PDT: Very weird. It seems that --- since this comes up when an app is being _deleted_ -- this would create a negative bias in the scores.; Like this Reply to this comment


by otto.st October 28, 2008 11:33 AM PDT: I only need copy+cut+paste and a Safari without crashing several times.; Like this Reply to this comment


by unborracho October 28, 2008 1:17 PM PDT: So... now the app store is going to be filled with negative reviews for all of their free apps. Why else would someone delete an app?

This is a terrible feature and is only going to hurt their rating system by skewing it with more negative than positive reviews. Unless they balance this with asking the user to rate the app after 5-10 uses or something along those lines.; Like this Reply to this comment


by versiontracker2007 October 28, 2008 5:20 PM PDT: Another reason to jailbreak your phone, to disable annoying things like this.; Like this Reply to this comment


by evansls October 28, 2008 6:00 PM PDT: dumb. people are deleting it for a reason and therefor will probably rate them 1 or zero stars.; Like this Reply to this comment


by versiontracker2007 October 29, 2008 2:51 AM PDT: @evanmoore
so thats why put this feature in - to rate an app 1 star if it's useless so they can let others & the developer know they don't like it.; Like this Reply to this comment


by brijar October 29, 2008 12:42 PM PDT: I agree that it would create a false negative rating of some very good apps. There are plenty of well designed functional Apps that I have deleted because and given the chance would have rated them negatively because I did not like them. Just because I did not like them or had no use for them does not mean someone else won't love that app. Most people that download the apps do not go back and rate them therefore a majority of the ratings would come when the app was deleted and would be negative. I like the idea of rating the app after 10 uses or so. That would be a MUCH more accurate rating system and it would not require people to go search for the app in the app store to rate it. I have several apps I use all the time but rarely remember to go back in and rate them.; Like this Reply to this comment


by the_beev October 29, 2008 4:29 PM PDT: That's ridiculous! Why would anyone want to delete Jelly Car?; Like this Reply to this comment


by joerichards November 20, 2008 5:29 AM PST: Such a ridiculous feature (eurk, 'feature'?)

me: [deletes app]

iphone: "Please rate this app"

me: "Oh yeah I LOVED it! 5 stars defo"

--

"That?s ridiculous! Why would anyone want to delete Jelly Car?"

Haha.; Like this Reply to this comment


by DataMonkey76 December 7, 2008 6:23 PM PST: In my opinion, the more data you capture, the more you can derive from it. If you think that ratings are averaged and displayed, you should respectfully rethink. Google uses a complex algorithm to serve up search results. IMHO, any sort of system that serves up results to consumers has many goals, and a primary one of serving apps that YOU would like. There are around 10-15k iPhone apps. Of course you see apps with 3 stars. That makes you wonder if ratings have any effect at all to what gets served up, right? As previous comments mention, there are many reasons to delete. If you read your user agreement, they're able to pull info easily to answer many of these questions and begin to get a picture of the true worth of an app -- you submit your user name / pass b4 adding any app. I'm confident that the best data you receive is that when someone deletes an app.... Given they know your habits on a multitude of aspects, it's not necessarily the only time to mine the data, but it seems to be the best. Think about how much they must know about your personality by just the songs you preview and ultimately buy ok iTunes. These algoriths combined with data will give answers to nearly all their questions. Nearly any scenario someone can propose as to why asking for a rating following deletion is a waste are overcome by triangulating.; Like this Reply to this comment

(11 Comments)

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