Apple iPhone 4 IOS5 Update failing and App Ugrades failing

Wednesday October 12th, 2011 marks the release of Apple’s IOS5 for the iPhone and iPad. Searches on the web show failing upgrades and I also am experiencing this failure.

Apps: I upgraded iTunes to the latest and greatest and updated my OS X 10.6.8 with all the latest and greatest. Still, no joy. Before upgrading the iPhone’s OS I like to get all my apps up to date and have a successful Sync. Even when I try to upgrade the apps, I am stymied. I click on the Apps tab in iTunes with a 17 next to it to bring up the Apps screen. At the bottom it reports “17 Updates Available” I click on that and get to the next screen. The “Download all free updates” button is at the top and when I click on that I get a new “Terms and Conditions” that I guess is the result of the new version of iTunes. I click on the “I have read…” check box and click on the Agree button. Your request could not be completed. It says something about my clock being correct or something … and the resulting web help page refers me to Windows iTunes problems.

IOS5: So, maybe in order to upgrade these apps I need to have the new IOS5 software installed on my phone since these apps have surely been updated due to the new IOS5 release. I tried 3 times and each time I get the message that my iPhone cannot be restored at this time, there was an internal error.

Web searching, and I read others woes in the same boat as me. I’m also having intermittent iTunes password problems. I even went through the process of changing my password. Hassle.

I don’t waste any time and call AppleCare: I paid for it, I use it. After 10-15 minutes on hold, I get a guy that doesn’t handle this particular issue and he has to transfer me to the iTunes people. It’s announced that my wait time is now 5 minutes or less and after about a minute I get a guy. I explain the issues and basically I’m told that the Apple servers are overloaded and that if I wait 3 hours it should work fine. That isn’t stopping me from trying to upgrade the apps, but the IOS5 update is a long process that wants to backup the iPhone each time and that takes a long time to complete …

Here’s hoping that that’s all it is. Mass upgrading resulting in overloaded iTunes servers.