App Store updating with multiple accounts now designed to make you want to kick a squirrel
“You can not update this software since you have not owned the major version of this software”
A year ago, I asked: when will the App Store learn to count? This question came from me getting App Store update notifications in iTunes and on updating ‘everything’ discovering that updates were still available. In the end, I tracked this down to there being multiple accounts on my machine—in order to see the updates for each account, I had to sign into the account, select Applications from the Library sidebar, and click ‘Check for updates’ at the foot of the Applications page.
For Apple, this is a pretty cumbersome process, but then a lot of things relating to iPhone and iPod touch sync are utterly dire from a UI standpoint (not least the dreadful Applications and Films tabs when you’re managing content on your device). However, I should have kept my mouth shut, because things just got a whole lot worse.
As of iTunes 9.0.3 (at least in my case), all ‘free updates’ for apps are now listed on a single page, but iTunes isn’t intelligent enough to figure out which accounts the apps come from. Therefore, ‘Download All Free Updates’ now cheerfully tells you ‘You can not update this software since you have not owned the major version of this software’ (nice copywriting, Apple). iTunes doesn’t bother saying which apps the dialog relates to, and so you have to click ‘Get Update’ on each individual app, to see if iTunes will enable you to download an update.
Presumably, Apple’s made this change to discourage multiple iTunes accounts on single machines. In my case, I have a US App Store account to redeem promotion codes so I can review apps and therefore promote them and the App Store. For reasons unknown, Apple has yet to realise that people outside of the US might like to have access to promo codes. However, plenty of other people use one Mac with several accounts, and so this change will trip them up, too.
So: well done, Apple. I’m hoping this is a bug, rather than a deliberate decision, but given Apple’s recent history on bizarre decisions relating to the App Store, it probably isn’t.
Thanks, Apple, for not noting which of my dozens of app updates I’ve ‘not owned the major version’ of. Also: sack your copywriter and whoever made this dialog.
Another bite of the Apple, another juicy worm found…
I think the thing is that the assumption is Apple stuff just works, so it’s all the more surprising when stuff like this happens.
It’s probably a side effect of the rumored “paid upgrades” changes. I hope it gets fixed soon.
I have 2 accounts for multiple countries
Are you finding the same thing’s happening on your account, Khaled?
yeah, with apps I had to purchase in the US store (before Apple created the Saudi store).
So I have to juggle around my accounts until everything is updated.
I know it’s useless but I filled an iTunes feedback form about it.
Ta. I’ve had a response from first-line, who’ve since escalated the complaint. I’ll post an update if Apple says something useful.
I’m having the same problem. I really didn’t mean to have two accounts and I’d merge them if knew how to. I had a dot-mac account from many years ago and that was my iTunes account. Fast forward and I purchased an iPhone about a year ago and for whatever reason I recall thinking it may be better to use my personal email from my own domain vs. my dot-mac/me account not realizing that this would truly settle me with 2 accounts. So now I have to juggle them back and forth until I get all my updates. Now I can’t get any. I clicked on one app’ to “buy” and it downloaded… not sure if I’m going to have to pay for it or not, never saw a dialog box with a price or anything???
This just adds confusion onto an already confusing situation.
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@Zymurguy: At present, the most sensible course of action is to get the updates page up and click every Get Update button in turn. If you get the ‘You don’t own the major version’ error, skip that app and move on to the next one. Once you’re done, IMMEDIATELY sign into the other account. If you’re lucky, no other updates will have been released in those seconds and you can use the ‘download all’ button at the top-right. Note that if you recognise all available updates at the start are within one account, ‘download all’ will work, although I doubt too many users remember which apps are tied to which accounts.
message was changed to “you can not update this software since you have not owned the major version of this software”. And no buy button. swapping accounts should fix it of course
I completely agree with you, Craig.
Well, I only have one account, and I get this problem. My iPhone has when I purchased the software, but iTunes still shows this conflict.
This is such a pain…as I try and figure out why apps I purchased previously in iTunes, now shows I never purchased?