iTunes Connect down for maintenance for most of July 13 (updated)
The Mac App Store, iTunes Store, and App Store have all been experiencing fairly serious connectivity issues over the past several hours. Many speculated this was a sign that OS X Lion was about to debut on the Mac App Store, despite plenty of evidence suggesting it won't hit until July 14 at the earliest. Now MacRumors has heard from developers that Apple intends to take iTunes Connect down for most of July 13 for "scheduled maintenance."
iTunes Connect will be undergoing scheduled maintenance on Wednesday, July 13 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. PDT.
During this time, iTunes Connect will still be available. However, pricing changes made between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. PDT will cause the app to become unavailable for purchase until maintenance is complete, at which point the app will become available at the new price. To avoid interruptions to the availability of your apps, do not make price changes during this time.
Lastly, customers may not be able to purchase apps in the Mexico, U.K., Australia, Switzerland, Japan or Norway storefronts during the scheduled maintenance.
If this really is "scheduled maintenance," it seems odd that we're just now hearing about it, only nine hours ahead of the downtime. There's no official link between this downtime and the issues Apple's online storefronts have been experiencing today, but the timing certainly doesn't appear to be coincidental.
This downtime will be an inconvenience to developers, just as today's intermittent App Store issues have inconvenienced potential buyers. None of this makes for a particularly inspiring prelude to the OS X Lion launch; Lion is around 4 GB in size, and with at least tens of thousands of downloads likely on the first day of availability, the Lion launch day is likely to be Apple's most bandwidth-intensive day ever. Here's hoping the company can get its affairs in order tomorrow.
Update: MacStories postulates that the maintenance could be to adjust prices internationally, which have grown disproportionally with international currency fluctuations. An interesting theory, and we'll update you when iTunes Connect is done with maintenance.
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The Mac App Store, iTunes Store, and App Store have all been experiencing fairly serious connectivity issues over the past several...
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Yep, it has to do with pricing :-) We finally have 99c apps in the Australian app store instead of being ripped off for $1.19 - it took a long time to happen though!!
July 13 2011 at 6:14 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI don't observe any change in the iTunes store though. Not that I buy much from there. I guess the labels need to keep gouging away. -rolls eyes-
July 13 2011 at 9:02 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI paid $32.67 for a XBOX 360 and my mom got a 17 inch Toshiba laptop for $94.83 being delivered to our house tomorrow by FedEX. I will never again pay expensive retail prices at stores. I even sold a 46 inch HDTV to my boss for $650 and it only cost me $52.78 to get. Here is the website we using to get all this stuff, CentBuzz.com
July 13 2011 at 1:02 PM Report abuse Permalink -2 rate up rate down ReplyI rented a movie on apple TV (in Lima, Peru) yesterday night (HD surprisingly at 1.99) but couldn't watch it due to (can't remember the exact on screen message) "some kind of issues".
July 13 2011 at 10:59 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply"the maintenance could be to adjust prices internationally"
Seriously? It takes NINE HOURS of downtime to adjust prices? It doesn't require any downtime at all to change the prices on my workplace's web store. The data gets prepped external to the store, and a SQL query updates the store's DB in a matter of seconds, even if I'm updating a thousand products at once.
It's not a coincidence...this is to make sure it's ready for Lion's launch.
http://appledrunk.com/itunes-connect-maintenance-today-lion-imminent/
That wouldn't affect the iOS App Store.
July 13 2011 at 1:25 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyCould this be related to the increase in fraudulent iTunes purchases that seem to be reported lately? My iTunes account was compromised and £25 worth of iTunes credit was spent on KingdomConquest points... a quick search on the web shows that it's happened a great deal recently.
July 13 2011 at 8:25 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyWondering if they're testing and/or migrating data to the new center and bringing it online? I imagine there's a lot of networking issues involved with splitting the load and implementing protocols to determine which server farm someone gets to download from. Or it could be a combination of that as well as letting all the Apple stores and retail outlets dl at once for simultaneous activations, give them priority.
July 13 2011 at 8:02 AM Report abuse Permalink +1 rate up rate down ReplyI tend to agree with where you're going here. Understood they need to adjust prices, but changing numbers in a database shouldn't require an entire business day of downtime. I suspect they have been trying to gradually 'throw the switch' on the Maiden facility for some time, hence the errors and inconsistencies. Anyone who works with gigantic SQL databases could probably tell you just how 'fun' it is to replicate everything to another site while the system is 1. Constantly in use and 2. Constantly changing. What 'could' have happened is they realized they would not meet their internal deadlines for things and / or there was too much inconsistency to try and do this on-line that they sucked it up, and froze parts of the system so they can get this done and over with. In a storefront, what's more critical, a clean, instantly available set of billing data or pricing and availability? New billing data can be redirected to the new systems while the old replicates in, and that's fine. They don't bill folks instantly anyway... But if you don't have correct information on what to charge for your product(s), and which ones are available, you don't have a store, right? Whether they launch Lion tonight, tomorrow, or whenever, I really get the feeling this has to do with getting the new data center on-line to help with the draw on the App Store infrastructure when they finally do release Lion... This is just my opinion, and we all know opinions are like trolls, every thread has at least one... (c:
July 13 2011 at 4:36 PM Report abuse Permalink +1 rate up rate down ReplyI wonder, business hours for Cupertino. Could there be a company wide stress test? As in, every employee in the company (not retail) trying to install this to ensure they can handle a load?
July 13 2011 at 7:05 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply
Mabhatter
The cloud is here:
http://xkcd.com/908/
Hmm.
To add chime to below, it has struck me for some time that devs selling into AU and some other countries are making packet. But... are US AppStore prices inclusive of tax, or are they too small to attract tax or are they exclusive as with other things. Cause a USD 0.99c app with a 10% tax is $1.10 (thereabouts). Any US reader wisdom on the subject locally?
As for Lion and ten's of thousands > 100's of thousands of 4gig downloads. Well, I'd wager that it has the potential to reach some kind of record for Apple at least. They have had some practice with iOS full versions
I just signed in to iTunes Connect and this information is nowhere to be found. I also haven't received any email on the matter. What's the source?
July 13 2011 at 6:07 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyDeals of the Day
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