For years, Apple has let you redownload many built-in apps from the App Store that you may have deleted, but store listings for those apps had a distinct difference from others: there was no way to leave a rating or review. That appears to have changed recently, though, as you can now review Apple’s apps in the store.
In a cursory, unscientific scan of some of Apple’s apps, many of them don’t have overwhelmingly positive scores. Files, Apple Maps, and Home all had ratings between three and three-and-a-half stars. Apple News is currently sitting at 2.3 stars. As 9to5Mac observed, Podcasts has a whopping two-star rating.
That said, most of Apple’s apps just don’t have many ratings — many don’t break triple digits — meaning the current reviews represent an infinitesimally small sample of the huge number of iOS users who are out there. (To give you a sense of just how large the iOS ecosystem is, Apple said in January that there were more than a billion iPhones in active use.) It also means that Apple’s apps have far fewer ratings than well-known apps like Gmail (347K), Facebook (1.1 million), and TikTok (10 million).
But even if there are only a few ratings right now, I still think the change is a good one, and I’m curious to see how ratings shake out for Apple’s apps over time. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to start drafting my review of Apple Mail where I publicly beg for a built-in snooze function.
