Pulse
Concrete pains from app reviews — and how strong they are
- Listening to music
Doesn’t work in the car with CarPlay
Pain 5 out of 10, noticeable. 113 reviews, in 31 of 95 apps. - Listening to music
Downloaded music won’t play offline
Pain 5 out of 10, noticeable. 96 reviews, in 23 of 95 apps. - Listening to music
The next song doesn’t start on its own
Pain 5 out of 10, noticeable. 84 reviews, in 28 of 95 apps. - Listening to music
Can’t send music to speakers or the TV
Pain 4 out of 10, noticeable. 79 reviews, in 24 of 95 apps. - Listening to music
Music stops when the screen goes off
Pain 4 out of 10, noticeable. 67 reviews, in 18 of 95 apps. - Listening to music
My own cover for a song or playlist
Pain 4 out of 10, noticeable. 66 reviews, in 18 of 95 apps. - Listening to music
Reorder songs in a playlist
Pain 4 out of 10, noticeable. 58 reviews, in 15 of 95 apps. - Listening to music
Song lyrics right in the player
Pain 4 out of 10, noticeable. 52 reviews, in 19 of 95 apps. - Listening to music
An Apple Watch app
Pain 3 out of 10, mild. 39 reviews, in 19 of 95 apps. - Listening to music
An equalizer to fine-tune the sound
Pain 3 out of 10, mild. 34 reviews, in 21 of 95 apps.
How we count
The sample is up to 500 recent App Store reviews for each of about 100 popular apps per category. We look for each need across all of the category’s reviews and check a random sample of matches by hand: at least 80% are correct.
“Pain” is a rough score from 1 to 10: half comes from the share of the category’s reviews that mention it, 30% from how many such reviews there are in total, 20% from the share of apps where it comes up. It is not search demand and not market size.
In words: 1–3 mild · 4–6 noticeable · 7–8 strong · 9–10 acute.