iPhone Reviews : Are They Valid?

Posted on 07 March 2010

If you go to Apple’s online store for some iPhone software, just how much can you trust the reviews that are written for the different applications? The theory is that other users may already have downloaded some of the apps you’re interested in, and will have written reviews based on their experiences with them. But in the past year or so, many questions have arisen about those iPhone reviews, and just how much they are really worth. There has been some suspicion all along that when an app gets a whole series of rave reviews, they might have been bought and paid for.

Jeff Bertolucci did some research into the validity of the iPhone reviews in the iTunes store, and published some of what he found at www.pcworld.com, early in 2009. He described several safeguards Apple had tried to put in place, such as ensuring that people actually had to download iPhone applications before reviewing them. This still didn’t mean, though, that the reviewers ever actually used the apps. Bertolucci noted that it’s never that hard to get around the safeguards.

The first big confirmation of any iPhone reviews being rigged, though, came in December of 2009, when a Chinese company named Molinker was demonstrated to have had its employees post glowing reviews of its 1000+ apps. The more good reviews an application gets, the more likely it is to be featured among the top iPhone apps and therefore be purchased and downloaded by more people. But as it turned out, over ninety percent of the reviews for Molinker apps were finally shown to be bogus. In response, Apple removed all of them from the store.

But Bertolucci, even when speculating about fake or skewed iPhone reviews, still felt that it was worthwhile to allow them and for users to read them. For one thing, the review pages provide a place where developers can respond to unfair or inexpert criticisms of the apps they have created. And the iPhone app reviews that are genuine, and have found a real flaw, will actually stand out amidst any faked avalanche of approval, and give users some actual valuable information. So while potential users should remain skeptical most of the time, they can still find some useful gems that might help them decide what to download.

Kenny Leichester is a foremost expert in the interior design industry specializing in the outdoor or patio settings using outdoor heaters, patio umbrellas, outdoor cushions, patio lighting and so on to create exquisitely beautiful layout. His work on patio umbrellas are widely distributed and is a regular contributor to PatioShoppers.com.

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