waltfrench

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.

EVERY airline must have a huge relationship with Microsoft in the data center, but Delta seems unique among the big ones, anyway, in trying to roll out Microsoft devices to the flight crews. The initial device selection for the cockpit, IIRC, was a Surface that couldn't properly run the Jeppsen software, so those devices were scrapped & upgraded to Intel-powered tablets. But the motivation must be around the attendants' Nokias, which are getting pretty old and obsolete at this point. The Surfaces, which on paper have nice specs, would've had to go along with the choice of a phone-sized device, to avoid an in-house team having to support two platforms.