If you’re not familiar with the new feature, it is just a simple pop up that appears when you delete an app from your phone and asks you to rate it out of five stars, or just say no-thanks. 

When analyzing data in any field from scientific analysis to reviews that others have made, you should always be on the lookout for confounding factors.  And what’s more confounding than skewing your data to be mostly from people who have deleted an app they paid money for?  

I’m sure the system works moderately well for free apps.  There’s less to loose if you delete a free app – you can always download it again (if it’s still free..).  And there are reasons why you wouldn’t want hundreds of free apps cluttering up your phone.  But if you’ve paid for the app then it’s a different story.  You’re either cleaning up your phone and it’s at the bottom of the ‘want-to-keep’ pile, or you just plain don’t like it and want it gone.  It’s just far easier (and economical) to keep an app if you like it. 

So where does that leave us? Now we have many reviews from people who don’t like your app or think it’s the worst one on their phone.  Personally I’ve noticed a decline in all my ratings with an influx of non-comment reviews.  

An obvious way around this would be to ask to rate after the nth running of the app.  It would be a nuisance but far less biased towards people who don’t like the app. 

Has anyone else seen this phenomenon? Any other solutions?

From a developers point of view, the reviews offer a somewhat anonymous way for your customers to give you feedback.  It’s a valuable mine of feature possibilities and ‘bug reports’.  The problem is, however, that you can’t easily get the whole picture just by using iTunes. 

You see, all the review comments are kept contained to the separate stores around the world.  So US customers and developers can’t easily see Australian comments and feedback. 

Perhaps there’s a better tool out there (if there is I’d love to know about it) but currently if you rely on iTunes to read your reviews, you’ll never be able to read all your reviews at once.

To get around this problem, you’re going to have to be a bit shifty..

1. Start iTunes normally and go to Store->View My Account
2. Enter your password
3. Click on “Change Country”
4. Pick another country that will have reviews you can read the language of
5. Accept the next screen..
6. Accept the license agreement
7. When asked for a credit card in that country, hit Apple-Q and get out of iTunes
8. Now load iTunes again..
9. Ta-Da! You’re now browsing the other country’s iTunes store

To get back it’s as easy as going to Settings->View My Account again and as soon as you enter your password it’ll realize you’ve done something odd and put you back in your native store.

So there you have it.  Again, if there’s a better way to do this PLEASE let me know!

“When do I get paid?”, “When will Apple transfer my money?”, “Does iTunes Connect give me my money in one lump sum?”, “How long should I wait until inquiring about my money?”

Well, I can’t answer all of the questions, but I can shed some light with my experience with the whole deal.

Financial Reports

You must wait for these after the end of the fiscal month.  Note that this is not the same as the calendar month, so don’t assume that you’ll get paid earning up to the 30th or 31st. The reports will start coming in about 10 or 11 days after the end of the fiscal month and may take 3 or 4 days before all the reports are ready. 

You’ll get a report for each region.

• Australia
• US
• Canada
• UK
• Eurpoe
• Japan
• Rest Of World

Some have noted that they didn’t receive what they expected at all – some in the order of half of what they were expecting. My experience has been good though with differences only ranging in about +/- $5

Bank Payments

If a region reaches US$250 or more owing to you, then you can expect payment into the bank account you entered in iTunes Connect. Because each region is seperate, you will receive one payment from each of the regions that owe you more than US$250.  

Payment for me occured in 14 days after the reports were ready, but some have claimed that Apple only pays on the 2nd of the month (obviously not in my experience) 

Be warned that your bank may charge you steeply for incoming foreign currency transfers.  In my case I was charged $15 PER REGION.  So it really adds up if you’re not prepared.  Talk to your bank – if you’re rolling in cash they’ll be more than happy to come to an agreement

Well, it was almost that easy.

iTunes Connect hasn’t always been the speediest to reply to emails, and sometimes it’s hard to know if they’ve ignored you, your email was filtered, or if it’s still just in a queue.

My advice is to keep up the emails until you eventually get a reply.

Anyhow, after a couple of emails to itsbanking@apple.com, I got a reply with the following pdf in it (its-bank) with instructions to fill out, sign and fax or email a scan back to itsbanking@apple.com.

They also noted that once you’ve entered bank data into iTunesConnect, it will never show any changes to the details. And further to that they’ll never send you confirmation.

And to top it all off, the process of changing the details can take up to 10 working days. So make sure you get your new details in quickly if you plan on closing your bank account any time soon.

All in all, not too bad. They’re obviously run off their feet over there with the mass of developers and any financial change like this will take time, but it would be nice if they had a more robust way of contacting them.. And not replying to change reqests with any sort of confirmation is just a little rude. All I can do now is hope that I get paid.