Pulse
Concrete pains from app reviews — and how strong they are
- Weather
The temperature is several degrees off
Pain 6 out of 10, noticeable. 139 reviews, in 36 of 92 apps. - Weather
Bombarded with pointless alerts
Pain 6 out of 10, noticeable. 115 reviews, in 40 of 92 apps. - Weather
A home-screen weather widget
Pain 4 out of 10, noticeable. 66 reviews, in 27 of 92 apps. - Weather
Weather on my Apple Watch
Pain 4 out of 10, noticeable. 65 reviews, in 20 of 92 apps. - Weather
Severe weather alerts don't arrive
Pain 4 out of 10, noticeable. 65 reviews, in 21 of 92 apps. - Weather
Says no rain while it's raining outside
Pain 4 out of 10, noticeable. 61 reviews, in 33 of 92 apps. - Weather
Shows the weather for the wrong place
Pain 3 out of 10, mild. 40 reviews, in 21 of 92 apps. - Weather
Pollen forecast for allergy sufferers
Pain 3 out of 10, mild. 32 reviews, in 19 of 92 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.