Daniel Eran Dilger
Google has struggled to attract a fraction of iOS' top-tier commercial app development for its own Android platform. The abusive language allowed in Google Play— for reviews of products the reviewer hasn't even downloaded— highlight another reason why so few developers take Android seriously as a platform.
App developers have lots of reasons for avoiding investing in Android as a platform: it's far more difficult to support the tens of thousands of different hardware models that use Android; only a small minority of the active Google Play users are running an updated version of Android less than a year old; and demographics for Android trend toward less educated, less affluent users who are less likely to spend money but more likely to vocally complain about their products.
That's highlighted in the reviews for Apple's new Beats Pill+ app for Android (above), a free title for linking multiple speakers together.
One day after launching the app for both iOS and Android, 40 Google Play users have posted given it five stars, while an overwhelming 60 have posted one star reviews, dripping with anger and claiming that the software gave them cancer, AIDS or causes "retardtion."
Both Apple and Google have struggled to cope with abusive or fake reviews in their app stores, and have taken steps to reduce the impact of phony reviews intended to artificially boost or abusively besmirch a developer's work.
However, a report by Apptenttive last year found that while more fake reviews were targeting iOS titles ("This might have something to do with the app download volume advantage that iOS enjoyed" the firm observed), the worst reviewers— defined by a Reviewer Quality metric looking at short word count and repetitive vocabulary— are on Google Play. It noted that "of the 100 apps with the worst Reviewer Quality scores, 80% of them are Android apps."
Apple's App Store requires that users download a developer's app before they review it. In Google Play, users just need to sign up for a Google+ account; the user can then write a review without even downloading it.
Christine McKee
Andrew Orr
Charles Martin
Marko Zivkovic
Wesley Hilliard
94 Comments
I don't think Apple should let droids use Beats apps. With the growing rate of ?Music alone on Apple devices, I'm thinking it should also be Apple exclusive, don't make droids happy and it helps Apple in the long run. Why give away your eco system? Let them come get it.
You'd think that since it's free, fAndroids would love it. But then again, they're on G +, so there's your problem.
I don't think Apple should let droids use Beats apps.
With the growing rate of ?Music alone on Apple devices, I'm thinking it should also be Apple exclusive, don't make droids happy and it helps Apple in the long run. Why give away your eco system? Let them come get it.
It makes more sense more sense for them to allow Android users to use the apps for Beats products.
Like the article says:
You would have to be less educated to buy a Beats product in the first place.
Fandroids in general are a lower class of people, so this sort of behavior is not unexpected.
While the issue is real, fanboyism is just stupid and so is the way this article is written. It's so deliberately pro-Apple and anti-Google it's ridiculous. I've noticed Appleinsider seems to not take any kind of critical look at what Apple are doing wrong and due to that I've now decided to find my Apple news elsewhere. PS. Yes I own Apple devices.