You can only get so far with a blog post. Have you filed a radar yet? I just did (rdar://9598285). Here's the text you can copy and paste (make sure you mention it's a dupe of 9598285).<p><i></i>*<p>Title: Users leave bad reviews for app that don't work on beta OS releases<p>Summary:<p>The point of the prereleases is to give developers time to modify their apps to address any compatibility issues (as well as add new features) before the public release of the operating system. Despite Apple's best intentions at keeping OS betas limited to developers, the fact of the matter remains that average users can and do get their hands on prerelease software. This leads many non-savvy users running applications not meant for the new release and often leave negative reviews on the App Store because the app is incompatible with the new OS.<p>For example, see this blog post: <a href="http://mbarclay.net/?p=1317" rel="nofollow">http://mbarclay.net/?p=1317</a><p>One potential solution to this is to disallow app reviews for users running unreleased OSes. Another is to tighten up the developer program so that each subsequent beta release allows more and more devices to receive installs. With the current 100 devices per account right off the bat, there is widespread abuse of access to prerelease software.
After years of countless web apps and services hopping on the bandwagon of the perpetual beta, the potency of the term has become diluted. Users don't think of betas as experimental builds of software for testing purposes; they think of Gmail, which only shed its beta status as a formality two years ago with 150 million users.<p>Give them any path, even a tricky or expensive one, to obtain a beta of a sexy new mobile operating system and they will, expecting it to work as well as the other "betas" they've used online.
Unfortunately, beta has come to mean "Private release to a select few individuals" to many people.<p>As for the bug reports in the review area, I imagine this is for a couple reasons.<p>First, it's the easy way to give feedback to the developer. I don't know of a way to provide feedback within the App Store architecture other than through the review process. Any other method has a chance of being painful. Being forced to sigh up to some developer site bug tracking system, and then getting sent email after email notifying you of every status update. Of course, I also have to search around for <i>how</i> to contact this particular developer with a bug. There is no easy method that I know of to do this.<p>Secondly, it's a sure way of getting the attention of the developer. Reviews directly impact the developer, and an email directly to the developer might not get a response as quickly as you want.<p>I'm not saying either reasoning is correct, or right. I'm not judging the reasoning. I just imagine that's the two biggest reasons for using reviews for bug reports.
This makes me wonder how many people ponied up the $99/yr. just to have access to the beta. Actual developers should know better. I wish Apple could figure out some way to prevent this - but if they were to prohibit reviews from people running a beta, they would also prevent legitimate reviews at the same time.<p>I also think there's a place for non-developers to be running the beta -- if they are responsible citizens.
I'm a dev, but not much of one yet. I'm on the beta, and I have discovered plenty of broken apps. When I discover issues, I communicate them directly to the app's developer. As a result I have also ended up beta-testing a number of apps for said developers. This is just as legitimate a use of beta-testing as developers testing their own apps.
I'm going to have to agree with him. It is a bit ridiculous that someone using the iOS 5 beta has their reviews go in along with the rest of them.<p>Apple should make it so reviews are only shown for the OS of the user's phone, so if I am on iOS 5 I can see the beta reviews, but most average joes still on iOS 4 would only see those relevant to iOS 4.<p>This also solves an issue of users still on iOS 3 with an app that may no longer be compatible for iOS 3 clogging up the reviews for they aren't relevant for most current iOS users.
One fix to this problem would be to prevent beta iOS versions from posting feeback at all.<p>Once they are out of beta the feedback feature can be turned back on.
There was a thread on Reddit that people were swapping access to the iOS beta, filled with people complaining about bugs, speed, etc.<p>These users weren't developers, were essentially pirating the software, didn't file bug reports and clearly just thought that it was something cool to get early and didn't understand the implications of it being a beta.
This is kind of closing the barn door after the horses get out and I realize there is a delay in getting new versions out.<p>Check the OS version against a list of tested versions.<p>If the version isn't in your list of tested versions refuse to run, or explain that the software may not work properly and please do not post reviews.
The problem is to marketing twerps "beta" means "OMG cutting edge unobtainium LOL" so they not only plaster it everywhere, they don't even know what it really means.
I thought iOS and OSX had versioned frameworks etc exactly to avoid issues like this. Yet every beta seems to bring nasty crashers from core functionality. How come?
I think this should not come to any surprise to iOS developers. People use the reviews page as a bug report page. For apps I've worked on we got way more negative reviews for particular bugs than we ever got emails reporting said bugs.<p>There might be a warning already, but if there isn't Apple should make it very clear that every iOS developer has provided technical support contacts and other helpful links that they can use to report bugs. Bug reports don't belong in the review unless the developer never responded to your contacts or never fixed your bug after contacting them.<p>I also think that the developer should be able to contest reviews that solely create FUD and aren't really reviews at all.