I would rate Apple’s default apps a bit higher than indicated in this article. It should be noted that I have been very intentional about using the default apps as my default where I find them adequate.
I think the small sample pool and the fact that people are more inclined to register dissatisfaction more than appreciation skews the ratings, though I’m sure that would be true of all app ratings. A much larger number rating pool will eventually help to reduce the skew.
Below are my ratings (first number from article, second my rating: article / mine). If I don’t rate it it means I don’t use it.
How would you rate them?
EDIT: Please note that Macworld left Keynote, Pages and Numbers off the list—probably a publishing mistake. The App Store shows the ratings so I have added that below.
Just mention a few that I have “extreme” views on:
Books (1): I’d give 0 if possible. The main reason is that it deleted all my de-drm’ed books from iCloud for no reasons, and it refuses to sync any of these again. I bought these from iTunes and de-drm’ed for long term storage. The secondary problem is that I cannot easily export its content.
Mail (5): I have a few dozens of emails per day. So I’m not a super heavy user. Mail is sufficient for my need. And more importantly, I just couldn’t find any other good mail apps with comparable privacy.
Music (2): It always nags me about joining Apple Music. I turned that off in settings repeatedly but it kept coming back. Now I just use Marvis.
That is really odd. I should’ve looked at that list from Macworld more closely. I wonder why those are not included? i’ll add them to my original list above for good measure.