I think we'd be better off if we had people who curated apps, then rate the curators.<p>The App Store has such a limited interface, that's it like walking into a minefield. You can't tell if something is crap or not until you've blown your money.<p>Apple doesn't even try to prevent you from buying crapware because they've already made their money.
I don't really trust high star rating but I'm inclined to trust lower star ratings. What I mean by that is if an app has 4-5 stars I don't assume it's good (unless it's an indie title) I assume they paid for the ratings. If an app has 1-3 stars I will read the reviews to see if my device or my use-case are mentioned (ie. Doesn't work on iPhone X OR Works great except feature X seems broken) but if the reviews are all "This sucks!!!!" or "Don't Buy" then I will take them into consideration but it won't stop be from downloading necessarily.
Title should be "77% of users surveyed...".<p>User surveys seem like a really poor metric here.<p>Also, being posted by the article creator, 12 upvotes and only 1 comment seems to suggest gaming the system.
We know people pay to have fake 5 star ratings, I wonder how many pay to have their competitors given fake 1 star ratings.<p>Even though I know people game the system, I still glance at the number of stars when downloading an app.
I wouldn't download a Retail app of any sort anyway. I may be a geek here but I think approach is likely to catch on rather than die away.<p>Even with all the hype, an "app" is supposed to be something more than a website or a brochure. I can't see much of a future in particular retailer or state agencies or whatever turning their websites into apps - it only really has the force of novelty on its side. Consumers will learn the uselessness of such things in the way that they previously learned the uselessness of free pens and other novelty material items.
A survey involving 115 people, mentioning percentages with fractional places with no mention of statistical error...<p>Myself working in the field of statistics this really makes me cringe...