Well the ratings are in…
and unfortunately they don’t look so hot. Now to be fair, the ratings/reviews are pretty decent from the folks who have taken the time to write them. They aren’t all positive, and some are downright rude, but unfortunate reality of the App Store is that (as Iliumsoft wrote) Apple really has designed the rating system to make it super simple for those who “hate it to rate it” and those who love it … to not rate it at all.
Now, I’m happy with what gCalWall has done. It has sold a “decent” amount of copies, and the free version has done very well. I’m never going to make it rich off the application (hell I’m never going to buy a broken down Honda off of it), but for being my very first attempt at building anything its done very well. Ultimately I took a lofty goal (capturing data from Google and getting onto the lockscreen) and for the most part I succeeded. I didn’t truly succeed, but the goal was impossible because Apple doesn’t allow access to the lockscreen. Ultimately, the failure of gCalWall is a failure of my own.
What do I mean by that? Well, I mean that the ratings for gCalWall are very low, because I mis-judged that people wouldn’t mind taking a few extra seconds and setting the created image as a wallpaper. The ratings are low not because the application itself doesn’t work – but because of STUPID restrictions placed on the developers, and my own mis-judgement that people wouldn’t mind the extra steps for the much added benefit of having a useful lockscreen.
Keep this in mind. I want to dynamically update the lockscreen when you run gCalWall. There’s nothing I want more. Its been written in the app description and mentioned in every fricking write-up on the web. I WANT TO DO IT. APPLE WON’T LET ME. So please – if you like the app, review it on the App Store. If your only complaint is that it doesn’t set the wallpaper – TELL APPLE, but don’t give it 1 star reviews because of that.
Long story short – the rating system is broken. Go read about the feelings a successful developer has about the process, and imagine how I feel. Not only am I getting my ass kicked by Apple once for limiting functionality, but I’m getting it kicked again by Apple for having a broken rating process.
