There's a tech community confirmation bias at work here. I can't see what the ratings were like before the most recent version, but Gmail has a 3.5/5 rating on the App Store right now. I suspect that a lot of "ignorant" non-tech users found it to be fine.
The ratings were particularly low before it went native. I know because I have a Gmail account in Mail.app and didn't use it because of this.
It's one thing not to listen to MG Siegler complain. It's another to excuse everyone else who complains on the App Store. They may not know the reason but they know the effect.
Strawman. They may not be scientific (statistics is a science, btw), but they are one way we have to infer whether people hate an app or not, which was the topic of this branch of the conversation.
I suspect that a lot of "ignorant" non-tech users didn't find it at all. You have to be fairly adventurous to even try a different mail client than the default Apple app.
There's a tech community confirmation bias at work here. I can't see what the ratings were like before the most recent version, but Gmail has a 3.5/5 rating on the App Store right now. I suspect that a lot of "ignorant" non-tech users found it to be fine.