937: TornadoGuard
| TornadoGuard |
 Title text: The bug report was marked 'could not reproduce'. |
[edit] Explanation
This is a comic with a take on an application store - the most common app stores are for iPhones and Android devices. The creator of this app is "DroidCoder2187", which implies that the app may be for Android devices.
App stores take all the reviews and average the ratings for the overall star rating. In this comic, we see why this is sometimes a bad idea. In this case, there are three 5 star reviews about the stability and user interface features of the app, left by users who actually never experienced its core functionality (simply because they never had a tornado since they got it); however, the only review related to whether the app really works is given the same weight as the others. Also see future comic 1098: Star Ratings.
The image text is funny because it is a note from the developer's bug report, which said they could not reproduce the error. Of course, they could only reproduce such a failure if there were a tornado coming towards their area. This is a fairly rare situation, especially in certain areas of the world. This lack of suitable testing conditions explains why the actual tornado-prediction portion of their code appears to be faulty.
[edit] Trivia
- The "could not reproduce" reason was also dealt with in 583: CNR.
[edit] Transcript
- [The comic is a single panel which resembles a reviews page for a mobile phone application]
- Application name: Tornado Guard
- Author: DroidCoder2187
- Description: Plays a loud alert sound when there is a tornado warning for your area.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. (Based on 4 reviews)
- User Reviews:
- Reviewer 1: Rated 5 stars Good UI! Many alert choices.
- Reviewer 2: Rated 5 stars Running great, no crashes
- Reviewer 3: Rated 5 stars I like how you can set multiple locations
- Reviewer 4: Rated 1 star App did not warn me about tornado.
- The problem with averaging star ratings
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