Presenting, Appirater

Like most developers, I’m not thrilled with the way the App Store presents my apps. There are several problems, but in particular, I really don’t like the user review system. It’s biased towards bad reviews, and that ends up hurting sales (there are odd exceptions to this). The only time a user is reminded or asked to rate an app is when you delete it, and you probably don’t care for the app if you’re deleting it. In comparison to the unhappy user, the satisfied user rarely takes the time to review your app. Which leaves you with crummy reviews from uninformed users hurting sales of your app.

If Apple would allow developers to respond to reviews, or more easily challenge the validity of a review, this would be no big deal. But I don’t have any hopes of Apple wising up and fixing anything, so I’m left trying to get more positive reviews of my apps to drown out the negatives ones.

Appirater
The goal of Appirater is to encourage your satisfied user’s to rate your app. To use it, place the Appirater code into your project, and add the following code in your app’s delegate class.

// import the Appirater class
#import "Appirater.h"

@implementationMyAppDelegate

- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions {
    // all your app's startup code
    // ...

    // call the Appirater class
    [Appirater appLaunched];
    return YES;
}

@end

Finally, open up Appirater.h and change the APPIRATER_APP_ID to your apps software id. You can also change the other #defines, for a more customized reminder message and buttons, but the default should suffice for most apps.

Now every time the user launches your app, Appirater will see if they’ve used the app for 30 days and launched it at least 15 times. If they have, they’ll be asked to rate the app, and then be taken to your app’s review page in the App Store. If you release a new version of your app, Appirater will again wait until the new version has been used 15 times for 30 days and then prompt the user again for another review. Optionally, you can adjust the days to wait and the launch number by changing DAYS_UNTIL_PROMPT and LAUNCHES_UNTIL_PROMPT in Appirater.h.

Code: https://github.com/arashpayan/appirater/

BTW, if you like Appirater, please consider checking out my game, Jabeh or the lite version of it.