On November 17th Apple quietly removed all ratings and reviews from their online store,
with no official justification as to why.
And this left many people wondering what Apple’s motivation was.
After all, about 90% of consumers read reviews before buying a product online, and considering
the Apple store offers exclusive items, it can be difficult to find the relevant information
customers need to make the right buying decision.
So in this video I’m going to share some interesting discoveries I made while investigating
this topic and help solve the mystery behind Apple’s decision to remove reviews from
their website.
This is Greg with Apple Explained, and I want to thank Squarespace for sponsoring this video.
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Now I want to start this video by emphasizing how unusual it is for an e-commerce store
to not allow user reviews.
Virtually every online marketplace has them: Amazon, eBay, Etsy, B&H, Micro Center, even
small Shopify stores offer user reviews.
And although they’ve been the source of some controversy for websites like Amazon,
who used to allow paid reviews, allowing for honest user reviews has pretty much become
standard business practice in the world of e-commerce.
And there’s data to explain why.
Not only do most people read reviews before buying a product online, but simply allowing
for reviews on your website boosts sales by 18%.
It doesn’t matter how many are negative or positive, the simple act of demonstrating
transparency and honesty builds trust with customers and makes them more likely to purchase
your product.
And things get even better if most of the reviews on your store are positive, with customers
trusting those comments twelve times more than the product description from the manufacturer.
So considering how many benefits there are to allowing reviews on an online store, why
would Apple suddenly remove them?
Well, there’s one reason that I thought of right away.
And it’s something many of you may be familiar with if you’ve followed Apple for a while.
When a new product is released, there’s usually some controversy surrounding it for
one reason or another.
With the MacBook Air it was the removal of the CD drive, with the iPhone 7 it was the
removal of the headphone jack, and with the MacBook Pro it was the removal of all other
ports except USB-C. And with each of these releases, customers expressed their frustration
in various ways.
By writing articles, contacting Apple directly through support, posting on social media,
or starting threads on the Internet.
But another common way of complaining was through reviews on Apple’s website, and
it usually went something like this.
Apple would release a product like the MacBook in 2015 which opted for USB-C charging instead
of MagSafe, a certain percentage of customers would be upset about that decision, and leave
reviews for something like this USB-C charging cable, since you couldn’t leave reviews
on anything except for accessories.
Here’s a good example that I managed to find on an archived webpage with Wayback Machine.
“MagSafe was a part of what made Apple computers feel so premium.
Quick on/off, reversible, and doesn't take your computer with it if you trip over it.
Now you need a bulky magnetic USB-C aftermarket dongle to recreate the functionality of what
was one of my favorite MacBook features.”
So that review talked about Apple’s old MagSafe charging cable and mentioned third
party magnetics you can add to USB-C cables to recreate MagSafe, but it said nothing about
the USB-C cable itself, like how it works or how reliable it is.
And that’s a good reason for Apple to remove reviews from their website, since there were
so many of these so-called reviews that don’t actually help customers make informed buying
decisions.
Instead, they just complain about design decisions Apple made on an unrelated product.
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Alright so now for the other side of the story, although many meaningless one-star reviews
litter the product pages of Apple’s online store, there are also many legitimate reviews
that bring important information to our attention.
Some of them positive, and some negative.
Let’s start with the negative.
This review left on the same USB-C cable I mentioned earlier said, “I really want to
love USB-C – it's such a versatile connector, truly a technical marvel – but it's shameful
that this cable only supports USB 2.0 data speeds and that it's not included with the
purchase of a USB-C charger.”
This review is very helpful to customers since it details the products limitations, something
Apple doesn’t mention in the Product Information section, as well as making it clear that power
adapters and charging cables are no longer sold together.
Which had been the case with previous generations of MacBooks, when their cables were actually
attached to their chargers.
A good example of a helpful positive review would be this for the same USB-C cable as
the previous review.
This one says, “This cable is solid.
They redid the jacket of the cable so I suspect we will see a lot less pealing and fraying
like old mag safe.
The cable supports USB device and 100 Watt USB-C PD.
This is huge for a 20 dollar cable.
This cable is one of the few things apple priced lower than the value it delivers.
The cable is also already the max length supported by USB-C PD.”
By reading that review, we found out that Apple potentially made the cable more fray-resistant,
and that it supports a much higher watt speed than the average USB-C cable.
With that extra information, which Apple doesn’t mention on the product page, customers might
be more likely to buy the product.
So overall, it appears that it’d be beneficial for Apple to keep reviews on their website.
Especially when most customers ignore irrelevant one-star reviews anyway.
But then I stumbled upon this video by Fstoppers called “Apple Fanboys, Where is your God
now?”
And despite the hostile title, it included some great information.
It opens by saying that the entire class of USB-C technology including USB-C 3.1, 3.2,
gen 2, and Thunderbolt 3 are all inherently unreliable.
He also makes it clear that this isn’t just an Apple problem, but an issue with any device
with USB-C ports.
The difference is that Apple’s MacBooks offer USB-C exclusively, whereas most other
notebooks have USB-C in addition to USB-A, HDMI, and other ports.
That also means MacBook users are forced to use dongles and adapters, which tend to amplify
the unreliable nature of USB-C.
Now what does all of this have to do with reviews?
Well, it turns out that many customers had serious problems with Apple’s USB-C adapters,
and they left countless negative reviews on Apple’s website detailing their experiences.
Here are some examples I pulled from the Fstoppers video.
Apple’s USB-C to USB adapter had two and a half stars, and featured reviews like this:
“Works when I plug my USB receiver for an external mouse.
Will not read a USB flash drive so pretty useless for any type of data transfer.”
“Unfortunately won’t work with USB 3.0, but works very well with USB 2.0” “This
USB-C to USB adapter can’t even read my USB 2.0 flash drive.”
Now there are dozens of these reviews and I recommend watching Fstoppers video if you
want to see more of them, but it reveals the fundamental flaw of USB-C. It’s responsible
for doing so much, it often doesn’t do everything successfully.
I’ve actually had this issue myself when connecting my MacBook Pro to an external TV
with Apple’s Digital AV Multipart Adapter.
Some ports deliver the HDMI video out, while others don’t.
And it seems to change on a daily basis.
But there were more adapters on Apple’s website that had similar reviews.
Here’s what some people had to say about the Thunderbolt 3 USB-C to Thunderbolt 2 adapter:
“Problems with chained displays waking up from sleep and restarting” “Similar to
most reviewers, I too have been plagued with problems.”
“As a bidirectional adapter, it can also connect new thunderbolt 3 devices to a Mac
with a thunderbolt or thunderbolt 2 port and macOS Sierra.
Except it doesn’t.”
Here are more reviews about their USB-C to SD Card Reader: “Didn’t work.
The adapter never worked for me.
I’ll have to take it in for an appointment and hopefully get a replacement that works.”
“Does not work with iPad Pro 3rd gen” “Does not work most of the time.
Will not mount 90% of the time and when it does decide to mount, it takes several minutes.”
So it’s undeniable that Apple has a problem on their hands by going all-in on USB-C without
ensuring the technology’s reliability.
And again, this problem has only been magnified with he use of adapters that may or may not
work as advertised.
But here’s the part that surprised me the most, this Fstoppers video which was the first
I found to reveal Apple’s adapter problems to a wide audience, was published on November
16th.
One day before Apple removed all reviews from their website.
Now could this be a coincidence?
Of course.
But could it also be Apple doing damage control to try and prevent this information for spreading
even further?
Yes absolutely.
And the most revealing aspect of this whole ordeal is that Apple has always received irrelevant
one star reviews on their accessories for as long as I can remember.
But only recently have people been leaving a new type of review that exposes their adapters
as unreliable and exposing Apple of false advertising.
And I believe it’s that phenomenon that motivated Apple to remove reviews from their
website altogether.
Instead of doing the right thing, which would be at least acknowledging the problem and
committing to solve the issues in future product updates or with new, more reliable adapters.
Alright guys thanks for watching and I’ll see you next time.