Touch ID for app reviews

There’s an ongoing discussion about how Apple could improve the App Store for users and, yes, developers.

An online store with over 1.6 million apps and hundreds of millions of active users is a delicate mechanism, and it is understandable Apple treads carefully with any change. I think there’s a low hanging fruit for Apple to pick, though, and it’s about how users review apps, a fundamental part of the discovery and purchase process.

A couple of days ago I wanted to leave a review for a nice videogame I discovered recently, Deemo. I opened the App Store app, searched for the game and pressed Write a review; at this point the app asked for my password, which is pretty long and complicated, and I almost gave up on my intention of leaving that favorable comment. And I know the prospect of typing my password (yep, it’s that bad/good) made me give up on reviewing other deserving apps in the past…

I then tweeted:

Dear @pschiller, please let users authenticate with Touch ID when leaving @AppStore reviews: it’s safe for payments, it is for feedback too!

— cdf1982 (@cdf1982) March 26, 2016

And that’s my whole point, but a tweet is easily missed: long and complicated passwords are important, and hopefully more users adopt them every day, but safe passwords are a pain to type, and Apple already has a secure system to avoid that annoyance.
Touch ID is safe to authenticate your device and your online and offline purchases, so it sure can be used for confirming one’s identity before leaving a review.

Removing any pain point in the users’ evaluation process could lead to more reviews, and we all know more reviews are good for users and, yes, again, developers, since they impact the app ranking in the search results… I sure know I’d love more (hopefully good) reviews for Tasktic.

I hope someone at Apple will see and consider this small proposal… if you agree, please share this post, and don’t forget to review the apps you love!