An App Store rating looks like a verdict. It behaves more like a monument, built over years and slow to move. It says very little about how this month's users feel.
I took the 12 most-rated Productivity apps on the US App Store, 32 million ratings between them, and split the headline star into the two numbers it hides: how far recent sentiment has fallen below the lifetime average, and whether the developer replies when users complain.
How it is measured
Population truth. Lifetime ratings and the star histogram come from Apple's full ratings data, every rating an app has ever received.
Recent sentiment. A fixed window of the most recent reviews by date, so an app captured to a depth of thousands is not compared on a multi-year average against an app with a few hundred. Same window for everyone.
