[grecy]

When a customer submits an app review from a beta iOS, that review should just be emailed directly to the developer, and not show up on any of the "official" review lists that other customers can see.

That way the developer is getting feedback about potential problems with the upcoming iOS, and can fix them, but it doesn't hurt their image for the 99.9% of customers running the non-beta iOS.

[verelo]

All i can say to this is SERIOUSLY! It drives me insane that our customers who are just technical enough to be dangerous can figure out how to get iOS 7 and give us feedback. Its distracting for the team and not helpful.

Apple needs to sort this kind of stuff out, i'm seriously frustrated by how many problems (dev centre + iOS 7) we're currently going through that we have zero control over.

[OvidNaso]

Reviews are not solely for the developer. In fact, they are there mainly for the users. They absolutely should be there for a public beta to let other users know the status of the application.

What should change is the silly star rating system and they should not be calculated or even used in the review. There is way too much dependence on a 'good score' for the developer and hiding beneficial information is not a solution.

[clarky07]

It is not a public beta in any way shape or form. The only way to get the beta is to be a developer paying $99 a year to Apple. The "users" do not have iOS 7 and therefore bad reviews based on an unreleased BETA OS should not be allowed. Most of these issues aren't even something wrong with the apps. They will get fixed when the OS stops being buggy.

[diminish]

out of curiosity, does apple read stuart's blog or HN? there must be a better way to signal this to ios7 program management when you are signed up for beta...do they have a dev feedback option, which many devs would request the same wish...

[GuiA]

They do have a bug tracker to which any registered developer can submit.

[potatolicious]

It's really more like a black hole to which you can sacrifice words and pray for the best.

[GuiA]

I've only reported a couple bugs in the past few years, but they got responded to in a somewhat speedy fashion. Maybe I just got lucky.

[htp]

Yep- send bugs and feature requests to https://bugreport.apple.com/ . Everything gets read, eventually, by a real live person.

There’s more information available about reporting bugs (like which logs are useful, where to find them on your device, and how to get them off your device) at https://developer.apple.com/bug-reporting/ .

[clarky07]

i suspect Apple is well aware that devs don't want beta users to be able to leave reviews. It has been a think since the app store started. They just don't have much incentive to do the work needed to make the change happen. It likely only effects a small number of people, and not an incredibly huge effect for the most part.

[yojimbo311]

I think you underestimate the impact these particular reviews are having for some, even if it's a minority.

Apple has as much incentive here as they have with any customer complaints. If it's important enough to developers and genuinely impacts their product (aka products Apple benefits from in more ways than one) they know it will effect the relationship they have with Apple. Like with anything however, the problem needs to communicated. The more people who communicate the same issue, the more likely it will get attention. https://bugreport.apple.com/ is the place to start. Not blogs, not HN, not Twitter or anything else.

If you want a problem you're having solved, start with filing a report in as detailed, and polite, a way as possible. Using blogs to bitch and complain about how Apple is ignoring an "obvious" issue, or how stupid they were to do things in such-and-such a way, is essentially counterproductive and being part of the problem rather than the solution. Using them to explain the issue, get a discussion around it going, coming up with solutions that work for you and fellow developers, and get additional reports filed, enhances the ability for Apple to respond with a genuine solution sooner rather than later. Sometimes they see the blogs and articles, but I'm sure it's more often they don't, so the trend I've seen over the last several years of vitriolic blogs being the first and only mention of a problem has, IMHO, really been disservice to the whole community.

It's always taken much longer than I would personally like or understand, but with enough bug reports filed on a given issue I do see traction and changes come later on down the road. They may not always be the changes I explicitly requested or expect, but they do resolve the problems in one way or another.

edit: grammar

[FireBeyond]

Similarly?

"Developers have had no chance to test and update these apps. Reviews/ratings are very important to sales and products.”

No chance? How so? These are Apple-registered developers. They’ve had no chance to test their app against iOS 7?

Yes, they have.

[clarky07]

What are you talking about? Are you quoting someone else? That isn't in my parent comment at all...

But since you mention it, while the devs can test their apps, they can't fix them yet. There is no way to submit an iOS 7 based app until, oh i don't know, iOS 7 is released.

[myko]

> In fact, they are there mainly for the users. They absolutely should be there for a public beta to let other users know the status of the application.

I'm more likely to agree with this if you mean only other users of the beta OS should be able to see the review. It doesn't do the general user any good to see a beta review, positive or negative, when they aren't even using the beta OS.

[cpncrunch]

The issue is that developers can't really update their app just yet for a number of reasons. First of all, if you update your app now the launch image and other things may look weird on ios 6. Also things may change in ios 7 between now and the final release.

Also bear in mind that (at least up to beta 4) there were quite a lot of bugs in ios 7 that the developers couldn't do anything about.

Pretty much every app will need to be updated for ios 7. It's a real shitstorm. Apple has created a bunch of work for every ios developer and broken all existing apps, and it's not really an improvement in my opinion.

[0x0]

Also because submitting a binary built with prerelease/beta tools is a guaranteed instant rejection. This should be well known for anyone running iOS 7 beta, since they're supposed to be "developers" :-/

[gkoberger]

While I don't disagree, they also haven't updated their design in 6 releases (and as many years). The changes mostly aren't breaking ("it looks weird/old" is better than "it's broken"), and a refresh is much needed to reenergize the ecosystem.