Item — HN Reader

> because positive reviews are simply not written usually

This is objectively false when you can go to the App Store right now and see that most apps are above a 3.0 meaning more than half rate them positively. People are happy to give good reviews to the ones that deserve it.

1 comments

Most apps are above a 3.0 because they implement the "nagware" to prompt normal happy users to leave reviews, rather than just relying on people reviewing out of the goodness of their hearts. Unfortunately this makes nagging table stakes to not end up with an abysmally low score.

When I get a nag I leave a 1 star review every time and I know I'm not the only one.

I’m curious—if it was unobtrusive would you feel the same way? For example if it were a game, and after you beat a level or finished a game, if the summary screen showing the stats and points from your session just had, down at the bottom, “Do you love this game? Consider leaving us a review in the App Store!”? I hate the bag popups too, especially when they get in the way of whatever I’m trying to do in the app and I’m forced to either dismiss the dialog or go do it. But is even _mentioning it to you_ you without the nag pop up too much? Deserving of a one star review?

Well, not covering content helps. Another thing that would help is sensitive to the emotional rhythms.

One problem is that before I have to close your modal dialog I have probably closed 20-30 other modal dialogs that I never wanted to have open just in the first few hours of the day. I have been using the web all day and people are always trying to steal a little bit of my attention with everybody trick in the book and the one thing that comes across as "luxury" to me is that when you don't do that in any way shape or form.

To be fair, a lot of the problem is applications jumping on you the moment you start them up. It might be that if you work for a company in Silicon Valley you think it just normal to get jumped on by five homeless people in a row as soon as you poke up your head. But sorry, it's not!

Specifically I have this problem with the Creative Cloud Applications that I only used when I am under distress. Like I use Adobe Illustrator for an unpleasant task that I have to do every three months (and have a checklist for now!) or I use Acrobat Pro because I am handling paperwork I am behind on. I want to fight off the demons in my head and get the job done, I do not want to evaluate anything about new features that have been added to the applications. If it had some sense that I'd completed a task and then had a good feeling about the app then yeah, maybe I'd like to hear about a new feature, or maybe put in a good word for your app.

> the summary screen showing the stats and points from your session just had, down at the bottom, “Do you love this game? Consider leaving us a review in the App Store!”?

Apple App Review rejected our app for having an unobtrusive message like that in the bottom of the release notes page in the menu of our app. "you're only allowed to solicit reviews through the apple dialog"

Citation needed. This just sounds like you're saying it because you feel like its true.