Apple needs cloud back up—and fast
I grimace every time I go to update apps or download promo codes in iTunes. Writing for mags like Tap! and iPod User, you might imagine I have many apps—and you’d be right. And every time I try to do one of the aforementioned actions, I get an error. Sometimes, it’s a ‘5002’ error, and other times I am bafflingly informed “The item you tried to buy is no longer available”. At the moment, I get six dialog boxes in a row (saying I cannot connect to the iTunes Store) every time I click ‘redeem’ to get promo codes.
If this was just happening to me, that would be bad enough. However, on talking to other iOS device users, it’s clear that’s not the case. Interestingly, though, the app update process is generally smoother on the actual devices. There are occasional issues, but not nearly as many as you get inside iTunes itself.
This is why I’m hoping Apple reveals something ‘magical’ regarding cloud computing very soon indeed. Apple’s building a gigantic data centre, and no-one knows why. I suspect there will be some new web services, and I hope they will be free and aimed primarily at iOS. Sign up for the free service and no more wired sync. No more iTunes errors. Instead, your content would sync across your devices, without you having to do a thing.
Of course, Apple might just announce a new version of iWeb with upgraded web hosting and say “Oh yeah, all you guys having problems with iTunes: tough noogies.”
I recently got that inscrutable “no longer available” message when trying to download a particular app: “The item you tried to buy is no longer available. The availability of the item has changed. The same item may be available with a different price or elsewhere on the store.”
Couldn’t find any other version of the app in the iTunes Store, and when I logged into a different country’s store and tried there, I got the same error message.
So I dropped the dev a line to let him know, just in case he was unaware of the problem. And it turns out that he’s let his iOS Developer Program membership lapse, and doesn’t intend to renew it.
I’m sure Apple have a reason for leaving the app in the iTunes Store, even though they don’t want to give it to anyone, but I can’t say it strikes me as very user-friendly.
The issue is primarily iTunes’s lack of intelligence. For months, it freaked whenever you had two accounts and tried to update apps. Now, it’s freaking when an app has been removed but it still thinks there’s an update (because perhaps the was before it was pulled). Either way it’s annoying, especially when you’ve over a thousand apps to keep track of.