21–30 of 107 posts
http://www.ngpixel.com/2011/06/25/mac-app-store-you-have-upd...
I got the same error message and I have made all my purchases from one account, in one region. Spotlight looks okay and I just gave up on the MAS. Didn't seem like a draconic regulation to me though, more like Apple's typical ineptitude on the cloud.
Is the issue limited to Apple? What's about other ecosystems and app stores?
Microsoft won't even let you move your X-Box Live account to a different country/region. My wife has this problem now since her Live account is stuck in Europe and there's just no way to move it to the US. This is extra troublesome on the X-Box since some games are region locked so she has to order some games from Europe. I think there may have been some misunderstanding here regarding his App store account though; I…
I suspect one of the reasons Apple hasn't "fixed" this is because doing so would require renegotiation with content providers, who'd most likely push for even more customer-hostile restrictions.
Is the issue limited to Apple? What's about other ecosystems and app stores?
If you're in a complex situation where you live in a second country, there's almost always a problem with buying stuff online if you need to bill in one country / ship to the other - and workarounds like needing to create two accounts are pretty common IMO (though usually it's just a case of needing to use a CC from the right country or having the billing address be your address in country A, but having the country field set to country B).
So no, apple's not too unique in this situation, but I've never experienced being unable to access stuff that I bought in one country (though I stay away from buying digital copies of movies etc for this reason), and I've definitely never heard of another company charging for this type of legitimate support, so they're likely unique there.
If you go organic and plant all heirloom/non-hybrid seeds then you won't have that problem. That's kind of like switching to Linux.
Compared to HULU and Netflix, Apple is one of the best in this regard. I have to get on a VPN to the USA to use my HULU or Netflix accounts, but iTunes just works, globally.
I have a US itunes account, and use it in whatever country I am in with no problem. Apple has never checked my IP address (so I think that's speculation on his part, or a mistake on the part of the support person he talked to.)
It doesn't make sense to have multiple iTunes accounts, and it would be good if Apple would let your merge them.
But it isn't Apple that is making them tied to regions, this is a requirement of the record and movie industries who seem to think that price and release discrimination by region makes sense.
In fact the only time I've had any problems as in Mexico where iTunes Match wasn't working (though Apple has rolled it out there now) but that was likely due to low quality internet, because here in Chile, with no iTunes match, my US iTunes Match is working fine (but a great internet connection.)
Yet another example of Apple idiocy (I'm a former customer, having spent easily $100K on Apple hardware). It became clear to me a year or so ago that Apple is moving in a direction that is anti-developer. At that time I stopped buying their hardware, installed Linux on the Apples I still had, and stopped writing apps for the iPhone. My life has been MUCH easier since then. We really don't need to be spending any more…
Sounds like you got bit by an ideological bug more than anything else. I'm sure the quality of the AppStore has improved.
Frankly, after its success we had far to many people "Switch" because they wanted to get rich quick and pump out really crappy apps polluting the store.
And of course they bitched about it at the time, every difference was proof that apple was evil.
I'm tired of the past four years of Apple haters thinking their uninformed ideological nonsense is relevant simply because they are a "developer" and have Apple hardware.
Apple is pro-developer, and unlike google actually practices "don't be evil."
But there are people who hate good and will rail against is day in and day out and call it evil.
I have a Canadian iTunes account and live in the US. It works just fine for me. I can still buy apps and update them, on iOS and Mac. I haven't encountered any IP issues. The only downside is that I need to keep using my Canadian credit card, and there are some apps I can't download but could use, like Spotify.
Much better than the IP address BS you see from other companies.
The writing's been on the wall for a very long time now. This is just another symptom of the continuing clamp down of OS X. The App Store was the first manacle, and Gatekeeper is the second. It's no longer the default that you can install apps from outside the Apple walled garden. I'll go out on a limb and guess that a couple of OS X versions from now they'll move the override to an obscure command line. The next one…
It isn't on a limb to repeat the nonsensical accusations that your ideology has been spewing all over hacker news for the past four years (and everywhere else too.)
Of course its also something that would never happen, if you are honest about how Apple operates.
You can even install unregulated software on a stock iPhone..... just downloaded from the net. Javascript Apps were there a year before the AppStore-- full apps, that run without a net connection and have access to the full iOS UI.
Of course this fact is inconvenient to the "Apple monopoly" story and so you guys never mention it and probably many of you who have never used iOS or developed for it don't even know about it.
We don't need your sympathy-- we're living much better lives with more freedom here on Apple's platform.
I'll take Steve Jobs and his compatriots looking out for my ass over Richard Stallman dictating my life, down to my very thoughts, any day.