BTW: the correct order is "short black". "Tall" isn't their smallest size, the un-advertised "short" is. They may not have the proper cups (as most customers don't know they exist), so you may get a free upgrade to "tall". As for "black", why would anyone want to adulterate a perfectly good coffee into a milkshake?
rotten tomatoes aggregates professional reviewers to give a general score
imdb lets people see the entire body of work by directors, writers and actors. So people will see a movie by a director they like the same way they'll pick up a book by a writer they like.
and then you have companies like Pixar and Disney (same, I know) that exist on brand. People will see the movie because it's a Pixar movie and they know what to expect (or not expect).
but what is even more interesting about the movie analogy is that with all these tools for discovering movies, box office take seems to be a function of advertising budget than anything else (to the point where they believe that movies have to hit a certain take on opening weekend to be successful at all).
When I go to Starbucks to buy my coffee, I get a beverage that has a certain level of caffeine I like, lots of milk, is sweet and will last me the better part of the morning. I found out that they have a product that I like and it's a repeatable experience: I go, I ask for my favorite brew and it has the same qualities that enjoy, every time.
When I look for an app for my phone, I can see screenshots of it and see the reviews and ratings. Neither of these are very reliable, for reasons I assume I don't need to elaborate here. At this point, I have the two options: 1) I can go online and do further research to try to separate truth from crap; or 2) I can install the app.
When it turns out that the app is crap after all -- or that it's good, but doesn't do what I need, or that it's excellent but the stuff I happen to need doesn't work for my phone or OS version -- I have to uninstall it and look for a better one. Or give up.
At this point, I've "paid" with my time and effort and hopes, so this is where the difference between free and $1 dollar is a lot more important than $1 dollar and $4 or $10 dollars. If the application was free, I feel disappointed and disgruntled. If it wasn't, I also feel ripped off.
But the most important part is that this whole process is repeated for every app. That is where the comparison with Starbucks breaks down: shopping for apps is fundamentally different from buying coffee at Starbucks. The comparison with movies is a lot better, because every movie is different and every movie is a gamble. Then again, movies still have more alternatives than apps: I usually go to see a movie because 1) I'm so excited about it that it doesn't matter that I'm risking a disappointment or 2) I want to spend some time relaxing with my wife and it doesn't matter that much whether the movie was good or decent, as long as it isn't godawful.
Bottom line: when it comes to purchasing apps, the reliability needs to improve. Alternately, I wouldn't mind if every paid app had a time-limited, full-feature free version. Whatever the cure, the problem has nothing to do with the quality of the goddamn coffee beans.