Wow. All this just grows ever more complex for Apple. The larger and the more ubiquitous they get, the more of these they will have to deal with, regardless of how well-intentioned the motives.

Personally, I just found it plain annoying.

Good decision. It was an annoyance.

Finally, Apple has resolved this terrible idea!

The current way of doing things ABSOLUTELY skews ratings downward into hell, because why else would you be deleting an app unless you didn't like it and didn't want to use it anymore?

The very first time it prompted me to assign a star rating to a program that I had just deleted because I didn't like it, I thought, "Uh-oh. This can't be good for developers' ratings." And then I proceeded to give the app a 1-star rating because it was junk.

Yet the programs that I love, and which have been living happily on my iPhone for months or years, have never prompted me for ratings, which would all get 4 or 5 star ratings from me.

Although I have taken the extra effort of going back to the app store and visiting the apps themselves to give them positive ratings (and reviews).

Yep. All part of the forward moving process.
It's all a big learning adventure; for Apple as well.

Sure is fun.

For some reason, I wasn't even sure the rating was going to iTunes Store, the little box doesn't say so directly. For a little while, I thought it goes back to my iTunes app like how songs are rated for local use. I use those ratings as one of my smart playlist conditionals, which in turn determines how often songs get synced to my phone. That aside, there is no local equivalent ratings, so I had to assume it was being sent.

I think the general adage is that people that had a bad experience tend to put more work into telling others about their experience as it is, which tends to skew the perception of the product. Making it that easy to post a negative probably doubly compounds the problem.

Apple should just track total number of hours that apps are in use on everyone's systems and sync that back to the store. Apps used for more hours per day are likely to be better...

This was one of those oddly shortsighted moves by Apple. This rating upon deletion system sounds great until you think about it for more than 2 seconds.