PSA: Don't leave bad app reviews based on iOS 5
We go through this every year, so apologies for not posting it sooner, but once again we'd like to remind everyone not to leave bad app reviews based on crashes or other "bugs" under iOS 5. Why?
Because iOS 5 is in beta. You're not supposed to be using it for anything other than testing your apps. Developers can't even upload iOS 5-compatible binaries to Apple right now, so there's nothing they can do about it, nor is there anything they should have to do about it.
So if you went ahead and installed iOS 5, you've given up your rights to publicly review apps until the fall. You're under NDA. You agreed to it. That's it. That's all.
Geek up, bear it, and save your snark for the fall -- when devs will be able to, and need to, support iOS 5 for all your apps.
[MBarclay via Daring Fireball]
There are 13 comments. Add yours.
So harsh
And this is why I hate when people get access to betas, as most of these people posting these reviews are NOT devs, but rather those that have bought the UDID activation on eBay, or who had their brother activate it.
These people haven't even agreed to an NDA, and probably don't even know that there is one...
This....
I really don't understand why this article NEEDS to be posted. It's wise to post it and I thank you guys, but the fact that it NEEDS to be posted is beyond me. Why would anyone review apps based on beta software???
Because where some of us are devs and are using the OS to test, others have managed to torrent a copy or bought their way in, install thinking their getting the latest goodness and then find out that nothing is compatible. Well no shit... Those people will automatically assume it's a problem with the app. It's just ridiculous. So, to answer your question, this needed to be posted because it's already happening.
In many ways we have Google et al to thank for this by making their web apps continually beta... the term of Beta software has been lost thanks to these branding mistakes.
Beta software should always be for testing and testing alone, not deploying a live system for the masses.
And then there are people like me who bought their way in to test the beta on a secondary device and is aware of what beta means and don't except anything to be 100% (or even 40%) ready.
Why not? Isn't this technically fragmentation? Like how after iOS4 came out and all kinds of compatibility issues happened with it and certain apps?
Not quite. iOS 5 isn't out yet. Fragmentation is when several versions of the operating system are in production use at the same time.
And used on a wide range of devices as well.
Not really. I've got an app that fails due to a bug in iOS directly. I've proved through sample code (which by the way I have submitted to Apple's bug tracking system) and it's very likely that it'll be fixed by the fall, the problem is until then we have users complaining.
When it's fixed there will be no fragmentation, but the issue remains when you change large parts of large systems, unexpected bugs crop up that you would even have imagined.
And the world continues to spiral into a nanny state.
Why Apple doesn't simply disallow App Store reviews by users on beta versions of iOS is beyond us.