A bug in Apple’s App and Media Stores is preventing iOS purchases Sunday night. The issue, revealed by MacRumors, places a user’s acceptance of new App Store Terms & Conditions into an infinite loop, asking a user to accept the terms over and over again without ever completing the purchase.
The problem is currently affecting all iOS purchases in the App, Music, and iBooks stores. The sequence proceeds as follows:
- A user attempts to make a purchase
- User is asked to accept the new Terms & Conditions
- User accepts the new Terms & Conditions
- User is asked to verify their purchase
- Process starts over again and user's acceptance of Terms & Conditions is not registered by Apple's store
The issue is also preventing users from updating existing apps, or restoring previously purchased apps, media, or books. The iTunes desktop client is also affected, and users are unable to work around the issue by downloading or updating apps or content via their Mac or PC.
Thus far, there is no known workaround, and Apple has not responded to our inquires on the issue. As this outage is impacting both Apple’s and developer’s pockets, we hope the engineers in Cupertino get it sorted out quickly.
Update [12:46 AM EDT]: Full functionality has been restored to the iOS and iTunes stores. Users will still have to accept the Terms & Conditions one final time, but this time the acceptance is registered and users can begin to purchase, restore, or update their content once agin.
As MacRumors's Jordan Golson described the situation:
Thank god, our long national nightmare is over. The App Store works again.
— Jordan Golson (@jlgolson) October 1, 2012