My app store downloads have gone glacial since last night. I don’t know whether this is a problem with the iPhone, an actual bottleneck caused by the launch of the iPad, or the fact that I am in China.
Twelve hours ago I noticed I had 12 app updates for my iphone, most of them new iPad-ready retina rebuilds, including Kindle, Instapaper and Day One.
I restarted the iPhone a couple of times but a majority of the new apps were still showing “Waiting”. The hotel wifi here in Beijing is fast and there is no slowdown at this end.
Overnight eight of the 12 apps had downloaded successfully while four are still waiting. This phenomenon has never happened before and I have no idea of the cause. I will report more as the day progresses. But, since I am on a restricted data plan I will have to pause the outstanding apps when I leave the hotel.
Thanks for your comment. I reported slow downloads when I was in China but I have since returned to London (where I have 50Mbps cable) and installed my new iPad. Unfortunately I didn't have a recent iTunes backup so decided to rely on iCloud. A mistake. Downloading the apps was so slow I thought there was a problem with the iPad and went to the trouble of resetting. The same happened and I am now four hours into restore. I'd recommend using iTunes when setting up a new device!
I'm on an AT&T network in Houston and my connection is fast enough I can watch netflix, about 600 KB/s max, I had posted to mac rumors as well, my downloads take forever, this is quite unusual as a couple of weeks ago I could request any app and have it downloaded in less than a minute. I have over 800 apps purchased and it's frustrating to experience this after I've been a iPad user since inception practically, even a advocate, and learning to code on these things, and now the app store is slowing to a snails pace.
Yea I am surprised that others haven't mentioned this. But there has been a big spike in readership overnight and lots of google searches for "slow downloads". It must be a widespread problem. I thought it was something to do with the fact that I am in Beijing rather than at home in London. Chinese friends confirm that Internet speeds can slow dramatically during the day when everyone is using their computers. It speeds up at night and this was my experience yesterday. But it does seem the problem is much more widespread and is probably caused by overload at Apple's servers. It's the price of success but Apple continues to invest in its data farms.
I am still seeing really slow download speeds from iTunes and App Stores
Your post is the only one I've seen about this so far. My apps downloads and updates are at a crawl as well. On my phone and in iTunes.