GoKawiilApple should be ashamed of its hostile App Store rating system
July 29 2026
I could have terminated the title of this blog post with “App Store” but wanted to talk about something specific that came up for me today: App Store user ratings and reviews. This subject is related to yesterday’s blog post No, you curate the App Store. Despite the fact that Apple employees privately review every version of every app before developers can publish to the App Store, supposedly ensuring the quality of apps, verifying that they do what they claim to do, Apple nonetheless also relies on App Store users to rate and review apps. You might wonder how an Apple-reviewed, Apple-approved app could still earn one-star ratings. On the other hand, some of these one-star ratings are undeserved, unfair.
When the App Store opened 18 years ago, it was a carbon copy of the iTunes Music Store designed to sell 99 cent songs. In fact, the iPhone App Store was included with iTunes for Mac. This song-inspired design had many unfortunate consequences for the software market, such as the chart-driven race to the bottom. You might forgive Apple for throwing together a system hastily: after all, when the iPhone itself was introduced the previous year, it did not support third-party native apps. Instead, web apps were the “sweet solution” defended by Steve Jobs, though most other people soured on the idea. In any case, that was two Apple CEOs ago, with John Ternus now ascending to the office. The App Store has grown enormously over time, yet in a number of important ways it remains the same old ill-conceived clone of the iTunes Music Store, to the detriment of App Store users and developers.
It ought to be obvious how the song and software markets differ:
Price. Songs in the iTunes Music Store were mostly 99 cents or near that price, whereas the price of apps in the App Store varies dramatically. Apple’s own Final Cut Pro in the Mac App Store is $299.99. Purchasing. Songs do not have In-Song Purchase. They’re all upfront paid. Although some old-school developers such as myself stubbornly cling to the upfront paid business model for apps, the App Store incentivizes In-App Purchases, and the majority of apps follow Apple’s incentives. Quality. A song “just works,” and if for some reason it refuses to play, that’s the fault of Apple and iTunes rather than a “bug” written in the song by the musician. A song downloaded from the iTunes Music Store does one and only one thing: play audio. Songs don’t have multiple features, options, and workflows like apps do. If a song displeases you, that’s not a bug either; music is mainly a matter of personal taste. Support. Software requires technical support from the developer. Songs do not require technical support from the musician. You generally can’t contact the musician. Maybe Ringo Starr will answer your fan mail decades later. Safety. The iTunes Music Store has no malware or scams. The greatest danger would be explicit lyrics. The musicians have already been curated by the record labels, so Apple doesn’t need to review songs before publishing them. To my knowledge, the iTunes Music Store does not accept amateur submissions from the public. In contrast, any unknown person in the world with $99 to pay for the Apple Developer Program can submit apps to the App Store.
The anonymous crowdsourced rating and review system was designed for songs, where the only thing that matters is personal musical taste. Songs are entertainment, not utilitarian. This system is horrible when applied to apps. Below is a one-star review that I discovered today—App Store developers must check manually for reviews because Apple fails to send us email notifications, as I mentioned in my blog post Small ways the App Store could be improved for developers—complaining that my app requested a rating… like the majority of other apps in the App Store!
Imagine if a professional writer for the tech news media submitted this app review to their editor for publication. The writer would likely be fired for incompetence. Yet Apple allows reviews like this to be published to the App Store. Also today, a fellow App Store developer on social media posted a screenshot of one-star review that their app received for a feature request:
Neither of these reviews talk about the actual features of the app, whether they work or how well they work. The reviews are irrationally nitpicky, choosing one quibble and making the entire review about that. Somehow the apps deserve an overall one-star rating based on that one factor? The fundamental problem is that in general, App Store users are not qualified by experience or temperament to write software reviews. They’re rank amateurs, not professionals. Software deserves much better than this. Some App Store users even abuse the review system for technical support purposes, instead of contacting support to ask their question, but it’s practically impossible to have a back-and-forth conversation with users in the App Store review and developer response, for example if I need more information from the user. The system was definitely not designed for that!
Indie developers can’t win in the App Store. Since we’re mostly unknown to the public, we need positive App Store ratings and reviews for our apps to encourage purchases. If we don’t request ratings from all users, then the self-initiated ratings tend to be disproportionately people with a complaint rather than satisfied users. The enlightened users recognize our dilemma, but there are also vigilante users like the one above who seems determined to punish all ratings requests, and as an unintended consequence, put indie developers out of business. Apple could mitigate this problem by emailing App Store customers at some point after purchase with a request to rate the app, so that app developers don’t need to request reviews. Indeed, if ratings requests were initiated by Apple, then Apple could go as far as to ban developer-initiated ratings requests in the App Store. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t seem interested in mitigating any problems with the App Store. Apple doesn’t even admit that the rating and review system is problematic.
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