Marco Arment, creator of Instapaper, reports via Marco.org, “Jim Dalrymple at The Loop, along with many other press outlets, received a statement from Apple regarding the corrupt App Store binaries from July 3–5: We had a temporary issue that began yesterday with a server that generated DRM code for some apps being downloaded, it affected a small number of users,” an Apple representative told The Loop. “The issue has been rectified and we don’t expect it to occur again. Users who experienced an issue launching an app caused by this server bug can delete the affected app and re-download it.”
Arment, who originally discovered and alerted Apple to the issue, writes, “It’s probably worth nitpicking ‘a small number of users’: based on my cumulative stats for July 3, Instapaper’s corruption alone probably affected well over 20,000 customers, and there were over 120 other apps affected, including some very big names such as Angry Birds, GoodReader, Yahoo, and the LA Times. But I’m glad this is fixed.”
Read more in the full article here.
Why So many problems now? Spam App’s in the app store… Corrupt downloads from the App Store. I hope my iPhone isn’t going downhill now that Apple is experiencing major quality issues with the App Store.
A spam app was bound to happen at some point just given the magnitude of the ecosystem. With 650,000 apps that have been approved, I imagine the number submitted for approval is quite a bit higher than that. Obviously, someone at Apple fell asleep at the wheel who was involved with the approval process. I still feel safer knowing that the apps are being vetted in the first place, even if mistakes will happen occasionally. And something tells me that the guy or gal at Apple who gave this thing a rubber stamp is looking for employment elsewhere today.
It was *not* someone falling asleep at the wheel (or at the switch as the idiom really goes).
Many, many legitimate apps access user’s contacts lists and such. Some even legitimately upload that to remote servers.
The app in question did nothing different from that stand point. What it did different was to do something nefarious with the information. Apple has *absolutely* no control over that!
The upcoming iOS 6 will ask the user if they want apps to be uploading contacts and such information to remote servers (something iOS 5 does not do). If the user allows this, then the same thing can happen as happens now. If the user does not allow this, this spam app type action will not happen.
It is a user thing. It will be even more so a user thing once iOS 6 ships.
Did you read the article? Apple builds a unique signature when you download an app and THAT’s what was messed up. This was not a case of “spam apps”
feel free to read a bout it. MDN doesn’t like to report on these things for some reason. http://www.macrumors.com/2012/07/05/apple-pulls-russian-sms-spam-app-from-app-store/
Don’t forget this one I sent to MDN and was not posted:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/find-and-call-app-becomes-first-trojan-to-appear-on-ios-app-store/
Apple was correct that that this affected a small number of users. This is not a “major quality issue”. Apple has at last report something like 60+ million OS X users, 20,000 is 0.00033333333% of users. Servers have big problems some times, this was a small one and easily rectified.
it’s iOS that’s affected here, not OS X.
Also more than 25 billion apps have been downloaded as of a few months ago (latest data I have).
If Instapaper had an issue with 20,000 and let’s say that it’s double that for apps such as Angry Birds and such. That’s still less than 3 million (worst case) out of over 25 billion or less than 0.012% for ALL apps affected not just Instapaper.
Oh jeezus. There was a problem and it’s fixed. And yes, it was a small problem based on the overall picture of the App Store. This guy sounds like a whiny bitch to me…
I can safely predict that this is the total demise of Apple, Inc. as well as a prelude to the End of the World.
Maybe not (just in case).
It’s been 5 years with growth year after year. 1 problem with the app store in all that time. I call that nitpicking myself. 20,000 versus half a million. That is a small number. Totally nitpicking!
Please READ.
It’s not 20,000. One app had 20,000 corrupt DRM issues. Plus there were at least another 120 apps affected.
You’re looking at upwards of 2 million corrupt files being served out. Granted, that’s a small PERCENTAGE of total app downloads, but it’s not a small number.
…began yesterday with a server that generated DRM code for some apps being downloaded
DRM (digital rights manglement) kills. 😳
Ok a problem occured that is small percentage wise, and,it was swiftly fixed and no meltdownmoccured. So why the big fuss? Typical ms windows user mentality, making a big deal out of nothing.
It wasn’t nothing to the app developers getting hit with 1 star reviews because of a perceived defect in their product. Those reviews aren’t getting pulled.