I to agree, in that "Review" the product and it's performance and such, not the price, hell nobody wants to pay for any product, yet along ones that costs as much as most Apple products do.
Products, replacement parts and other BS reviews don't help at all. Let me decided if something / anything cost to much, but please, do tell me if it works right, works well maybe how it compares to a similar product, but leave the cost(s), or even the customer service OUT of the review.
Make a note about the customer service at said place, but don't make it part of the score of the "Product".
Nothing Sucks because it is to damn expensive, and nothing is Awesome because it is cheap.
For several years, I've called for Apple (and Amazon, etc) to require review-writers to affirm something like the following:
“I purchased this product on the same terms as any customer can, and have NO relationship with either the supplier (dev, etc) or its competitors, other than as an ordinary customer.”
Every review should go to the app or product supplier, who should regularly report to Apple whether they see suspicious reviews.
This won't stop haters or fanboys (nor should it!) but when surreptitious deals ARE found, it can allow Apple to penalize the seller for its participation in dishonest deals. These could, for instance, include warnings in the reviews page that the supplier has been associated with self-dealing reviews.
I'm pretty libertarian in general, but as Akerlof's Nobel Prize work shows, pseudo- and mis-information harms a marketplace, making it worse for legit sellers and all buyers.
I'm pretty libertarian in general, but as Akerlof's Nobel Prize work shows, pseudo- and mis-information harms a marketplace, making it worse for legit sellers and all buyers.
One of the foundations of libertarianism is personal responsibility but it’s hard for people to be responsible when everyone else is lying.
We don’t know yet why or for what reason Apple chose to do this. We don't know Apple’s plans for the future of customer reviews. And because of the vacuum created people in this thread immediately assigned a sinister and devious motive to it. And that is exactly why the claim of Apple hatred permeating customer “reviews” is a valid one. Online reviews are overwhelmingly tilted to the negative because people with axes to grind and anti-Apple agendas write negative things in an attempt to damage the company they hate so virulently. That agenda driven attitude is on full display right here in the AppleInsider comment forums. Real and valid criticisms are drowned out by the cacophony of hateful agendas.
I really like the reviews but a big problem with reviews are false reviews by clearly a products competition or just people haters. It is hard to distinguish those in reviews from the genuine ones but I find reviews do help and if a product is good or bad enough as the case can be, generally, there is enough reviews to give you an idea of the product overall.
Reviews can definitely help and sway you to or from a product but it is how to filter them. Verified purchases can help and some sort of history of a users purchasing history could possibly work too (in the back end). Difficult one.
You will always get the odd few people who haven't clue how to use a product and stick in a bad review because they can't work it out but those are usually easy to spot.
Unfortunately, if people feel short-changed by a product, then it is human nature to seek out online feedback and negatively review. So yes, an overall rating based on all feedback is likely to be skewed downwards.
I can’t say I’ve ever felt the need to read reviews of Apple products on their own site.
I read reviews of Apple products on AI etc. for leisure and to help me decide which Apple product to buy (iPad Air or iPad Pro for example). I have 4 macs, 3 ipads and 4 iphones in the house at present. I’ve never been let down by any Apple product if I’m honest, so for me reviews of Apple products are purely about tech specs and helping get best bang for my bucks.
So I don’t care about about reviews of Apple products on on Apple’ site. Reviews of non-apple products on their store I do value.
But yes, reviews online do not have the value they used to have. On Amazon, reviews are often listed on the wrong product for example.
Someone may finally have just spoken up, and perhaps benefiting a slow news day, but the reviews have been mostly absent from Apple's store for at least a week, if not more. They've briefly come back, then disappeared again, indicating that something is going on behind the scenes.
With the internet angst in full effect, all that's left is DED's dissection of the history of online reviews, and how Apple somehow managed to outsmart everyone else.
The reviews weren’t representative of products... because Apple censored them at will. I reviewed my iPad Pro Smart Keyboard to share the fact that the lettering was wearing off already after only three to four months of usage. I didn’t return it because I knew every unit would be the same (just like my iPhone 6s’ half-yellowed screen, which was actually pretty much the same as the ones on display at the Apple store).
Apple hid my review.
There was nothing abusive in my review. It wasn’t just deleted, because trying to post a new one gave me the message that I’d already reviewed the product. They just didn’t want me posting undesirable info.
It’s becoming more and more useless to have reviews on websites. Not because customers don’t make useful contributions, and not just because of garbage content (which IS an issue, but let’s be honest: that’s not why review features are really going away). It’s because of the owners of the sites, not their users.
A company either wants meaningless “engagement” or nothing at all. Amazon won’t let us downvote unhelpful reviews anymore; that’s stopping users from moderating bad reviews, but there’s “engagement”. YouTube does NOTHING with downvotes of videos or comments, because a downvoted is still “engagement”.
The there’s just the editing of impressions: Apple hides reviews they don’t like (and now removed the whole system). AI (and other sites) removed the downvoting of comments and articles, and won’t allow comments on certain articles at all (political articles and the increasingly prevalent advertising “articles”). This keeps the community from having any real impact on whatever the site owners really want. It’s not freedom; we are on their turf and they are going to treat it that way.
Then there’s the antisocial business model: eBay will happily screw sellers just to keep eBay buyers coming. This proves that it’s a business-to-customer site, not a consumer-to-consumer auction site.
Countless more examples are out there.
This is the inevitable reversal of an early web trend that has seemingly not worked out for the bottom line of increasingly expense-averse, (and consumer-to-consumer advice-averse) companies.
Customer feedback and review voting seemed exciting - an attractor to websites, promoting “community” and “social networking” - until companies realized that there was a need for moderation (expense) and that the unvarnished truth was visible to potential buyers (seen as a potential loss of sales to upper management who don’t actually care about the sincerity of any social effort). “Social networking” has degraded into corporatist manipulation and whatever best suits the companies pretending to promote community.
This was inevitable. This is your so-called “free market”, where the corporations control image and impressions as much as possible. Consumer choice is unwelcome and averted as much as possible.
The reviews weren’t representative of products... because Apple censored them at will. I reviewed my iPad Pro Smart Keyboard to share the fact that the lettering was wearing off already after only three to four months of usage. I didn’t return it because I knew every unit would be the same (just like my iPhone 6s’ half-yellowed screen, which was actually pretty much the same as the ones on display at the Apple store).
Apple hid my review.
There was nothing abusive in my review. It wasn’t just deleted, because trying to post a new one gave me the message that I’d already reviewed the product. They just didn’t want me posting undesirable info.
It’s becoming more and more useless to have reviews on websites. Not because customers don’t make useful contributions, and not just because of garbage content (which IS an issue, but let’s be honest: that’s not why review features are really going away). It’s because of the owners of the sites, not their users.
A company either wants meaningless “engagement” or nothing at all. Amazon won’t let us downvote unhelpful reviews anymore; that’s stopping users from moderating bad reviews, but there’s “engagement”. YouTube does NOTHING with downvotes of videos or comments, because a downvoted is still “engagement”.
The there’s just the editing of impressions: Apple hides reviews they don’t like (and now removed the whole system). AI (and other sites) removed the downvoting of comments and articles, and won’t allow comments on certain articles at all (political articles and the increasingly prevalent advertising “articles”). This keeps the community from having any real impact on whatever the site owners really want. It’s not freedom; we are on their turf and they are going to treat it that way.
Then there’s the antisocial business model: eBay will happily screw sellers just to keep eBay buyers coming. This proves that it’s a business-to-customer site, not a consumer-to-consumer auction site.
Countless more examples are out there.
This is the inevitable reversal of an early web trend that has seemingly not worked out for the bottom line of increasingly expense-averse, (and consumer-to-consumer advice-averse) companies.
Customer feedback and review voting seemed exciting - an attractor to websites, promoting “community” and “social networking” - until companies realized that there was a need for moderation (expense) and that the unvarnished truth was visible to potential buyers (seen as a potential loss of sales to upper management who don’t actually care about the sincerity of any social effort). “Social networking” has degraded into corporatist manipulation and whatever best suits the companies pretending to promote community.
This was inevitable. This is your so-called “free market”, where the corporations control image and impressions as much as possible. Consumer choice is unwelcome and averted as much as possible.
The “reviews” universe is extremely flawed and if you add “made by Apple” it gets much worse.
You have people saying they love the product but randomly give 3-stars.
You have people that gives 1-star because it was awesome but expensive.
You have people that gives 5-star because the product was terrible but they treat them well at x,y,z store.
You have people giving 1-star because they didn’t read the description and the “CHARGE CABLE” they ordered doesn’t transfer data at TB3 speeds
You have people giving 1-star because the cables are terrible but they treat them like s...t
I don't think it has anything to do with the youtuber review. Maybe something was compromised. Most reviews are people asking for headphone jack and the other half saying they hate dongles anyway.
Still don't think is flawed? Do you have that coworker that makes the imbecile statement “the top rating I give on Uber/Lyft is 3-star” wtf it doesn’t work that way. Plus they are so proud for saying that.
Reviews in general are disappearing because of abuse. Yelp will be all that’s left because they directly profit from it, by requiring companies to pay them to remove abusive and fraudulent reviews.
That Fstoppers review does seem sincere, and the reviewer certainly can't legitimately be called an Apple Hater. He makes some good observations about dongles and Thunderbolt 3, which by the way is problematic with Windows machines too tho I don't know of any that offer only TB3. To be honest I've never used the Thunderbolt port on my XPS
Are you saying fake reviews do not exist?
I found that not everybody who wrote their review really reflect the actual product quality and capability bur rather what they really think they wanted the product to be or to have. But the worst of all are fake reviewer who appeared genuine but obviously have their own agenda. The more successful your company is, the more you will be targeted. It would be naive to pretend that they do not exist.
My wife religiously reads through Amazon reviews on popular products. She's looking for something with a lot of reviews and she'll read through until she has a general consensus of what the product offers. We bought out Roboroc S5 based on the reviews. Hell we even bought cat food and litter based on the reviews and in all cases the product lived up to exactly what that consensus of reviews claimed.
There are ways of combatting fake reviews. You can filter via "verified purchase" and run 3rd party tools like Fakespot.
We don’t know yet why or for what reason Apple chose to do this. We don't know Apple’s plans for the future of customer reviews. And because of the vacuum created people in this thread immediately assigned a sinister and devious motive to it. And that is exactly why the claim of Apple hatred permeating customer “reviews” is a valid one. Online reviews are overwhelmingly tilted to the negative because people with axes to grind and anti-Apple agendas write negative things in an attempt to damage the company they hate so virulently. That agenda driven attitude is on full display right here in the AppleInsider comment forums. Real and valid criticisms are drowned out by the cacophony of hateful agendas.
Agreed. Because the reviews are troll fest, they have no real value. But how to fx them?
I generally read the negative reviews on Amazon - the 2 star and 1 star ones, when buying a product. It gives me an idea about genuine problems that may be. It's just a matter of using my mind to separate the wheat from the chaff.
We don’t know yet why or for what reason Apple chose to do this. We don't know Apple’s plans for the future of customer reviews. And because of the vacuum created people in this thread immediately assigned a sinister and devious motive to it. And that is exactly why the claim of Apple hatred permeating customer “reviews” is a valid one. Online reviews are overwhelmingly tilted to the negative because people with axes to grind and anti-Apple agendas write negative things in an attempt to damage the company they hate so virulently. That agenda driven attitude is on full display right here in the AppleInsider comment forums. Real and valid criticisms are drowned out by the cacophony of hateful agendas.
Agreed. Because the reviews are troll fest, they have no real value. But how to fx them?
“Real and valid criticisms are drowned out.,,..” sounds kind of like AI.
There were many useless review, but there were also useful ones. The problem is that Apple threw the baby out with the bathwater and created an information vacuum by providing no warning, explanation or information on whether it plans to bring them back in a different form, etc, making it’s motivation ripe for speculation and rumors.
I've always found online reviews too much biased to be useful.
It is WAY better to find your way to the Apple store and try things yourself.
Do they let you try accessory cables and such for your new Apple computer before you buy it just to be sure they connect to the appropriate source properly? That was one of the major use issues mentioned in the linked video review embedded in the AI article. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ8OQpHOL_Y
I think this is overdue for a longtime. It is not just Apple but also reviews on many sites including Amazon have degenerated over the last few years to be a cess-pool of trolling, inappropriate complaints not related to the product itself (customer service beefs, shipping etc), and in many instances people who I suspect represent PR firms or trying to get an occult political point made (book reviews on Amazon being a case in point).
As an example is the availability of Johnson and Johnson baby shampoo manufactured in other countries (like Italy) on Amazon for American consumption. I use a ton of J&JBS in daily use and the foreign sourced shampoo is almost identical to the domestic baby shampoo but it is cheaper. The reviews of the foreign baby shampoo is so ridiculously negative that it could only be manufactured by a PR agenda to steer people away from the cheaper alternative.
Are there differences? Crazy subtle if any...like the difference of Coca-Cola made in Atlanta versus Athens but judging from the strident reviews you would think the Italian shampoo was rancid.
Comments
Products, replacement parts and other BS reviews don't help at all. Let me decided if something / anything cost to much, but please, do tell me if it works right, works well maybe how it compares to a similar product, but leave the cost(s), or even the customer service OUT of the review.
Make a note about the customer service at said place, but don't make it part of the score of the "Product".
Nothing Sucks because it is to damn expensive, and nothing is Awesome because it is cheap.
“I purchased this product on the same terms as any customer can, and have NO relationship with either the supplier (dev, etc) or its competitors, other than as an ordinary customer.”
Every review should go to the app or product supplier, who should regularly report to Apple whether they see suspicious reviews.
This won't stop haters or fanboys (nor should it!) but when surreptitious deals ARE found, it can allow Apple to penalize the seller for its participation in dishonest deals. These could, for instance, include warnings in the reviews page that the supplier has been associated with self-dealing reviews.
I'm pretty libertarian in general, but as Akerlof's Nobel Prize work shows, pseudo- and mis-information harms a marketplace, making it worse for legit sellers and all buyers.
Reviews can definitely help and sway you to or from a product but it is how to filter them. Verified purchases can help and some sort of history of a users purchasing history could possibly work too (in the back end). Difficult one.
You will always get the odd few people who haven't clue how to use a product and stick in a bad review because they can't work it out but those are usually easy to spot.
I can’t say I’ve ever felt the need to read reviews of Apple products on their own site.
I read reviews of Apple products on AI etc. for leisure and to help me decide which Apple product to buy (iPad Air or iPad Pro for example). I have 4 macs, 3 ipads and 4 iphones in the house at present. I’ve never been let down by any Apple product if I’m honest, so for me reviews of Apple products are purely about tech specs and helping get best bang for my bucks.
So I don’t care about about reviews of Apple products on on Apple’ site. Reviews of non-apple products on their store I do value.
But yes, reviews online do not have the value they used to have. On Amazon, reviews are often listed on the wrong product for example.
Apple hid my review.
There was nothing abusive in my review. It wasn’t just deleted, because trying to post a new one gave me the message that I’d already reviewed the product. They just didn’t want me posting undesirable info.
It’s becoming more and more useless to have reviews on websites. Not because customers don’t make useful contributions, and not just because of garbage content (which IS an issue, but let’s be honest: that’s not why review features are really going away). It’s because of the owners of the sites, not their users.
A company either wants meaningless “engagement” or nothing at all. Amazon won’t let us downvote unhelpful reviews anymore; that’s stopping users from moderating bad reviews, but there’s “engagement”. YouTube does NOTHING with downvotes of videos or comments, because a downvoted is still “engagement”.
The there’s just the editing of impressions: Apple hides reviews they don’t like (and now removed the whole system). AI (and other sites) removed the downvoting of comments and articles, and won’t allow comments on certain articles at all (political articles and the increasingly prevalent advertising “articles”). This keeps the community from having any real impact on whatever the site owners really want. It’s not freedom; we are on their turf and they are going to treat it that way.
Then there’s the antisocial business model: eBay will happily screw sellers just to keep eBay buyers coming. This proves that it’s a business-to-customer site, not a consumer-to-consumer auction site.
Countless more examples are out there.
This is the inevitable reversal of an early web trend that has seemingly not worked out for the bottom line of increasingly expense-averse, (and consumer-to-consumer advice-averse) companies.
Customer feedback and review voting seemed exciting - an attractor to websites, promoting “community” and “social networking” - until companies realized that there was a need for moderation (expense) and that the unvarnished truth was visible to potential buyers (seen as a potential loss of sales to upper management who don’t actually care about the sincerity of any social effort). “Social networking” has degraded into corporatist manipulation and whatever best suits the companies pretending to promote community.
This was inevitable. This is your so-called “free market”, where the corporations control image and impressions as much as possible. Consumer choice is unwelcome and averted as much as possible.
You have people giving 1-star because the cables are terrible but they treat them like s...t
I don't think it has anything to do with the youtuber review. Maybe something was compromised. Most reviews are people asking for headphone jack and the other half saying they hate dongles anyway.
Still don't think is flawed? Do you have that coworker that makes the imbecile statement “the top rating I give on Uber/Lyft is 3-star” wtf it doesn’t work that way. Plus they are so proud for saying that.
I found that not everybody who wrote their review really reflect the actual product quality and capability bur rather what they really think they wanted the product to be or to have. But the worst of all are fake reviewer who appeared genuine but obviously have their own agenda. The more successful your company is, the more you will be targeted. It would be naive to pretend that they do not exist.
My wife religiously reads through Amazon reviews on popular products. She's looking for something with a lot of reviews and she'll read through until she has a general consensus of what the product offers. We bought out Roboroc S5 based on the reviews. Hell we even bought cat food and litter based on the reviews and in all cases the product lived up to exactly what that consensus of reviews claimed.
There are ways of combatting fake reviews. You can filter via "verified purchase" and run 3rd party tools like Fakespot.
There were many useless review, but there were also useful ones. The problem is that Apple threw the baby out with the bathwater and created an information vacuum by providing no warning, explanation or information on whether it plans to bring them back in a different form, etc, making it’s motivation ripe for speculation and rumors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ8OQpHOL_Y
As an example is the availability of Johnson and Johnson baby shampoo manufactured in other countries (like Italy) on Amazon for American consumption. I use a ton of J&JBS in daily use and the foreign sourced shampoo is almost identical to the domestic baby shampoo but it is cheaper. The reviews of the foreign baby shampoo is so ridiculously negative that it could only be manufactured by a PR agenda to steer people away from the cheaper alternative.
Are there differences? Crazy subtle if any...like the difference of Coca-Cola made in Atlanta versus Athens but judging from the strident reviews you would think the Italian shampoo was rancid.