Most common words in 1-star and 5-star App Store reviews

By Rene Ritchie
last updated

The most common words used uniquely in 1-star and 5-star App Store reviews, according to Instapaper and Tumblr developer Marco Arment who wrote a script to collect the data:

5-star: awesome, worth, thanks, amazing, simple, perfect, price, everything, ever, must, ipod, before, found, store, never, recommend, done, take, always, touch1-star: waste, money, crashes, tried, useless, nothing, paid, open, deleted, downloaded, didn’t, says, stupid, anything, actually, account, bought, apple, already

His analysis is well worth the read.

[Marco.org]

Rene Ritchie
Rene Ritchie
Contributor

Rene Ritchie is one of the most respected Apple analysts in the business, reaching a combined audience of over 40 million readers a month. His YouTube channel, Vector, has over 90 thousand subscribers and 14 million views and his podcasts, including Debug, have been downloaded over 20 million times. He also regularly co-hosts MacBreak Weekly for the TWiT network and co-hosted CES Live! and Talk Mobile. Based in Montreal, Rene is a former director of product marketing, web developer, and graphic designer. He's authored several books and appeared on numerous television and radio segments to discuss Apple and the technology industry. When not working, he likes to cook, grapple, and spend time with his friends and family.

17 Comments
  • Surprised that "ads" isn't in the 1 star review list. The most common words I see are usually "crashes" and "ads".
  • Slow day?
  • @Geo No, you? :p
  • Don't mtater, just update to iOS 4 (It's free) You will get everything exept FFC, 5MP Camera and retina display your missing out on the design, I feel sorry for the people who have a 3G, and there contract did not expire. They have to pay like 700 800$
  • Sundays are always slow news days :) I'm thankful that TiPb are one of the few who post at all on a Sunday...
  • waste, money, crashes, tried, useless, nothing, paid, open, deleted, downloaded, didn’t, says, stupid, anything, actually, account, bought, apple, already
  • When I read reviews for an app that has caught m attention I check out the recent reviews. I often find it amusing that someone will give an app 1 star because they had an issue, but made no effort to contact the developer to alert them.
    The only big issue I have is with the iPad app pricing, yes the screen is bigger, but I have to ask does it take so much more development time (I'm not a developer so this is a serious question) that it justified? I have said it before I would rather pay an avg price of the iphone/ipad app and get a + app verion so I an use it on either one. But that's me.
    One thing I did take away is people go so used to spending a dollar here and there for apps and not caring about it, but when the bill shows up and you spent $100 to get ipad & iphone apps it starts to ring up the bill.
  • Interesting groups of words. Something speechwriters do as regular practice - using specific words as association.
    Kick Butt
  • Fairly interesting post. Geo, you do know NFL season started right? Spend some minutes away from the CPU screen
  • The most common review words I see are u, ur, b4, 2morrow, sux, dun, kool...
  • @Me Look who's talking.
  • @Raptormd, my thinking on it is that in and of itself, no, it doesn't take much extra code to go from the iPhone to the iPad. There may be extra money on developing the visual assets for the different resolutions and coding around that.
    That said, there could be extra coding to provide extra features and capabilities with the extra screen size in mind (that you don't have on the iPhone).
    My real thinking on it is this. Some developers have wanted to have higher prices for quite a while (sort of like the studios and the MP3 prices, and the publishers with the book prices).
    On the iPhone, it was difficult to do that. The apps first came out at .99. The sweet spot looks like around .99 to $3. There's a lot of inertia there against increasing the prices. I know I pretty much don't buy anything over $3. It goes away from the impulse buy to really thinking if it is any good or not.
    With the iPad and new form factor, they're trying to reset that "starting" point to $10 or so, with the new screen size/form factor as the excuse. I'm probably never going to get an iPad because of that.
  • @notgeo... I'm not the one complaining about the lack of tech news on a Sunday
  • @notgeo... I wasn't the one complaining about the lack of tech news on a Sunday
  • xryeklavbkzijvicsmag, zaposlitev, tzhMeQn.
  • Posted on I got what you mean , thnokyau for putting up.Woh I am delighted to find this website through google. The outcome of the war is in our hands the outcome of words is in the council. by Homer.
  • I just found out about your product (as it is embedded on the O'Reilly blog). That's something I was looking for, and I am impressed with the quality of the speech generated.