iReview was a service offered by Apple Computer (now

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...

) dedicated to reviews of

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

content. During the 2000 Macworld Conference in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

, Apple

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American businessman, inventor, and investor best known for co-founding the technology company Apple Inc. Jobs was also the founder of NeXT and chairman and majority shareholder o ...

introduced this service along with

iTools iTools or ITools may refer to: * iTools, an online service from Apple (later known as .Mac then MobileMe, before evolving into the current iCloud service) *ITools Resourceome iTools{{cite journal, vauthors=Dinov ID, Rubin D, Lorensen W, Dugan J, ...

, which was the free predecessor to Apple's current

iCloud iCloud is the personal cloud service of Apple Inc. Launched on October 12, 2011, iCloud enables users to store and Data synchronization, sync data across devices, including Apple Mail, Calendar (Apple), Apple Calendar, Photos (Apple), Apple Ph ...

subscription service. iReview was part of a reaction to the commercial success of the

iMac The iMac is a series of all-in-one computers from Apple Inc., sold as part of the company's Mac (computer), Mac family of computers. First introduced in 1998, it has remained a primary part of Apple's consumer desktop offerings since and evol ...

that resulted in thousands of new computer owners suddenly having access to the Internet. The main purpose of the service was to give new users a place for detailed reviews on websites on the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables Content (media), content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond Information technology, IT specialists and hobbyis ...

. iReview was integrated into the Apple website as part of the new "tabbed" layout, with a dedicated tab alongside iCards, iTools, the

online store Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce which allows consumers to directly buy goods or services from a seller over the Internet using a web browser or a mobile app. Consumers find a product of interest by visiting the website of the ...

QuickTime QuickTime (or QuickTime Player) is an extensible multimedia architecture created by Apple, which supports playing, streaming, encoding, and transcoding a variety of digital media formats. The term ''QuickTime'' also refers to the QuickTime Pla ...

, and online support. Once a visitor clicked on the iReview tab, they could choose from one of 15 categories of websites for specific reviews on subjects that may be of interest. Each initial review was published by Apple employees, who gave their input on the site along with a detailed review and an overall rating. Visitors to iReview were also able to review and rate the sites themselves as well. Users could organize the viewing of reviews by ratings or by simple searches.

Cancellation

In February 2001, Apple cancelled the iReview service. Its failure to generate traffic is generally attributed to a lack of awareness of the service by most web users, a lack of perceived openness of the system, and the idea that most people would typically not spend time reading others' opinions of websites when they could quickly generate their own opinions by visiting the sites themselves.

References

{{Apple-stub Apple Inc. services Recommender systems