Yesterday an App Store issue was brought to Apple’s attention involving a bug that would make newly updated apps crash upon install. The bug was later found to be a DRM Server Issue, and since then Apple seems to have hidden bad app reviews…
Many popular apps like Instapaper were affected by the issue. it was first noticed by Instapaper creator, Marco Arment. The problem lasted through most of yesterday, and Apple didn’t acknowledge it for a while (as usual.)
Because this problem was affecting so many popular apps on the App Store, you can imagine the poor reviews some of the received when unsuspecting users updated their apps to only find they wouldn’t even open. This caused a flood of one-star ratings which honestly, weren’t fair to the developers as they had no control over this issue.
Late yesterday, Apple released a statement noting that the issue has been resolved and everything was working as expected. It also looks like they took initiative to hide those one-star reviews as well.
This was noted by MacStories:
As of this morning, it appears Apple has indeed removed negative reviews from apps affected by the bug. Apps like Instapaper, GoodReader, and The Early Edition are showing no reviews for the latest versions available, which are the ones that were crashing earlier in the week. We haven’t checked on every single app that was affected, but it is safe to assume at this point Apple will remove all reviews (not just negative ones) from any app that received a corrupted update.
Well not exactly. It seems that Apple just virtually triggered a new update in the App Store for iOS devices which made the one-star reviews hidden under just the “current version’s” reviews. The bad reviews were actually just moved to “All Versions.”
Personally I think Apple should completely remove the bad ratings. This wasn’t the developers fault. But overall, at least they made some attempt to make things somewhat fair.
Were your updates corrupted yesterday?
Source: MacStories via Cult of Mac
