Language and Computation

You have to be very careful when looking at reviews and ratings in the iPhone App Store (does ‘App Store’ need the ‘iPhone’ qualifier?). Some reviews are good and point out genuinely positive or negative issues with apps, but the majority can safely be ignored, as shown by the uselessness of their comments (‘this app is rubbish, I want my money back’) and their inability to match what they say with what they do. The number of times I have seen reviews where the reviewer wrote ‘This app gets 5 stars from me!’ when they actually gave ONE, or the reverse (‘this cr*p app gets zero stars from me’, but giving 5) is astonishing. Either those people are innumerate or incapable of keeping more than one thought in their head.

I haven’t got any hard facts, but have read somewhere that people are paid for leaving positive reviews of some apps and negative reviews of competing ones. That is about the only explanation for the number of stupid reviews that isn’t too depressing.