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!