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Comment by alexanderh | Hacker News Reader

I would say review systems and internet research negates most of the 'gamble' involved with most app purchases. But I guess most users are just mindless consumer zombies.

There are a few instances where you "wont know till ya try it yourself"... but they're few and far between with proper research.

I think it really speaks to the expectation of developers here that users are expected to "gamble" on app purchases without knowing whether the app is good or not by reading reviews, and general consensus. Thats a really exploitative purchasing pattern to expect from your users...

Not saying there arent plenty of dumb people to pray on, but... yea.. wow. A lot of app store developers here on HN just expect their users to be dumb ill informed "johns" to exploit for a dollar on a gamble... That really says something.

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That's the whole point: you don't have to research the coffee because you already know what it's like. People don't like to pay for stuff they don't like, and they don't like doing research. So if you can somehow assure them that they are going to like what you're selling, that's worth a lot. I'd rather spend $5 on a cup of coffee that I know I will like than $.05 on an app that I don't know I will like. I don't trust the opinions of people on the internet, or even most of my friends in real life, so reviews are not that useful to me.

> I would say review systems and internet research negates most of the 'gamble' involved with most app purchases.

Logically, it seems like it should. But a lot of apps are just good fits for some people and bad fits for others. Some people love Angry Birds, and some people hate it. For a lot of apps, it doesn't matter how many reviews you read -- you just can't tell if you'll like it or not.

I bought the $0.99 Tetris app because it was getting rave reviews. And after just a few minutes, I realized I hated it. In my experience, reviews/popularity are a very bad predictor of whether or not a particular app will be useful to me.

> I bought the $0.99 Tetris app because it was getting rave reviews. And after just a few minutes, I realized I hated it.

And you only have to experience this once to "double-negate" the gamble. One time is enough to make a user realize that it's still a craps shoot. Reviews online are often a very weak signal for quality.

google play (android) allows for full refund within 15 minutes of purchase. I don't know if you bought from them, or somewhere else (maybe itunes), but you can check their policy. It likely won't help you this time, but maybe in the future you can just get money back.

I've returned and gotten a refund for most apps I installed on Play. I kept maybe two dozen or so quality ones.

Works great since you can pretty much get the crux of the quality of an app in an extremely short time (sometimes as little as several seconds).

>I would say review systems and internet research negates most of the 'gamble' involved with most app purchases.

I like to occasionally take a flier on a new application that's not gotten enough attention to have research and reviews yet.

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