Apple drops unpopular “Rate on Delete” for iPhone OS 4.0 Apps

Posted on by

Some developers who have been trying out iPhone OS 4.0 have noted that the “Rate on Delete” “feature” is not present in the new operating system.

This “feature” has been a controversial facet of the iPhone OS for some time. With a lot of developers feeling that the score people gave to their apps when deleting them may be arbitrary at best, and possibly vindictive at worst. So I doubt it will be missed by people with apps to sell.

It possibly will not be missed by users either, who may have even vented their frustration at another step to go through when removing an app, against the app they were deleting. In any case rating an app when you delete it, for any reason, is probably not the best time to do it – for anybody concerned. I am sure Apple have seen this in their own metrics.

It’s clear to see the “Rate on Delete” does not really work if you scroll through top apps in the App Store. Even supremely popular apps like “Tap Tap Revenge 3″ have almost the same number of 1 star ratings as they do 5 star ratings. And both the 1 and 5 star ratings are an order of magnitude larger than any intermediate scores. Very clearly not representative.

What’s your view on “Rate on Delete”? Will you miss it? Or was it an additional step in app removal you found tiresome?

Let us know in the comments.

  • http://www.handy-games.com Thygrrr

    Good Riddance!

    The feature was indeed counterintuitive, because you never delete the apps you love, but you always delete the ones you hate.

    However, I'm not looking forward to the coming inflation of app ratings now. Also, Apple may want to redact ratings that are obviously mistaken – we get a lot of 1-Star ratings on our apps with nothing but love and praise in the text. Some even along the lines of: “1 Star – Best game ever”.