Apple Closes App Store Review Loophole

Apple has taken action to improve the iTunes App Store experience for developers by responding to a major complaint regarding App reviews. Under the new scheme, users cannot review applications unless they have purchased or downloaded them first. Users attempting to post a review of application that they haven’t downloaded or purchased are now met with a dialog box stating: “You must own this item to write a Customer Review. In order to write a Custom Review for this item you must have purchased or downloaded it.”

This fix should eliminate the number of bogus reviews that have been used to raise or lower an Apps overall rating. Reviews that many felt were being submitted by the developers themselves, their rivals, or people with nothing better to do.