“Swarms of online shoppers armed with new iPods and iTunes gift cards apparently overwhelmed Apple’s iTunes music store over the holiday, prompting error messages and slowdowns of 20 minutes or more for downloads of a single song,” The Associated Press reports.
AP reports, “It was not immediately clear how many people were affected by the slowdowns, and Apple Computer Inc. would not immediately comment Wednesday on what caused the slowdown and whether it had been fixed. Analysts said the problems likely were the result of too many people with holiday iPods and iTunes gift cards trying to access the site at once.”
MacDailyNews Take: Geniuses.
AP continues, “Traffic indeed was heavy over the holiday, with more than four times as many people visiting the iTunes Web site on Christmas than at the same time last year, online market researcher Hitwise said Wednesday.”
AP reports, “Some financial analysts said the interruption could be viewed as a sign that sales dramatically exceeded the Cupertino-based company’s own forecasts. ‘It’s actually created more positive buzz among analysts — traffic was so great it blew up the site,’ said Gene Munster, senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray. ‘If anything it could be a positive — demand was better than they were expecting.'”
Full article here.
Related article:
Apple’s dominant iTunes Music Store saw 50% surge in sales on Christmas Day – December 28, 2005
Gee, I wonder if the anal-cyst dolts are going to recycle their stories next year that ask if iTMS sales are cyclical?
This can’t be. Don’t they know that iTunes is in steep decline?
iTunes Store works fine now. Just downloaded some songs to my new MacBookPro 15″. Sure is faster loading my iPod than my old G4 400mhz! Life is good!
The TV news suggested the systems crashed under the load!
20 minutes? HAH! My grandson waited for 17 hours while the 10-day-free-trial of World of WarCrack downloaded. It only took me 6 hours, but I was paying attention and restarted it when it stopped for (what I considered) too long.
DLMeyer – the Voice of G.L.Horton’s Stage Page
MikeR
“iTunes Store works fine now”
I understand Apple purchased some extra bandwidth from Zune.net
hotinplaya:
LOL
In other news, checkout lines at retailers increased from the usual 20 minute wait at Best Buy to 2 hours!
My father in law bought a Mini recently and I was showing him around iTunes and some of the other software. On the 26th I tried to download a free episode of Scrubs to demonstrate how well the store works and was unsuccessful on numerous attempts.
At first I figured it was because it was Tuesday and they were updating the store with new content, but this explanation makes a lot of sense. I wouldn’t be too surprised if we see similar slow-downs for a few more days after Christmas as people return home and utilize the gift cards, etc.
This is really huge newz! After selling 14 million iPods last year, don’t you think that Apple was prepared for far greater traffic this year? And it STILL was overloaded!! Even the new Xserves weren’t enough!. I expect to hear Steve talk about this at the Keynote. I also 10am on Christmas morning tried to get the 1.2.1 update because my brand spanking new refurbished iPod ($130 cheaper) came down the chimney w/Santa with only the 1.1.x software.
Funny, it was made in Shanghi, came to the US, went back to Shanghi for refurbishing, came back to the US and arrived via my Chinese wife who lived near Shanghi. ha
Meanwhile, the song purchased from the Zune Marketplace downloaded fairly quickly.
Yeah, I ran into this problem trying while helping my nieces redeem gift certificates for their new iPods. A little frustrating when you’re trying to teach a 9-year-old how to use iTunes, but my Apple stock felt good! Same thing happened with the AIM system while I was demo’ing iChat.
What really happened was their IIS server reached its client limit. Apple only paid for 10,000 simultaneous connections.
This is really huge newz! After selling 14 million iPods last year, don’t you think that Apple was prepared for far greater traffic this year? And it STILL was overloaded!!
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Not really, the store was overloaded on the day after Christmas last year as well… The point is, Apple probably didn’t feel it was necessary to purchase and increase the iTunes store bandwidth for just one day. I’m sure they knew the store would be overloaded on Dec 26, but would return to normal in the following days.
I would have sent a lot of iTunes gift certificates but for some dumb reason they can’t be used by anyone in a different country so I didn’t purchase any.
iTunes could not connect to the iTunes Store. The network connection timed out.
Make sure your network settings are correct and your network connection is active, then try again.
^^^ That’s the message I’ve been getting for a few days now.
My two children who got new ipods this Christmas were pretty bummed out that the store didn’t work on Christmas. Apple needs to grab a clue. Don’t get me wrong – I like Apple. But if they truly want to be better than the rest they, they need to plan a little better.
Four times the traffic? They were already selling 3 million songs a day. Is it now up to (albeit briefly) 12 million a day?!?!?
The iTunes Store worked just fine during Ramadan and Hanukkah. Maybe you guys should think about spreading Christmas out a few days, like say, maybe twelve?
You’ve spelled out a perfect reason why it’s pathetic, rick. Cupertino should NEVER let this happen again. How many people received iPods for Christmas and had this as their very first experience with Apple?
Hey what about the 181 people that Forester Research used to track iTunes sales?. Golly gee wiz it must be that Apple’s iTunes sales are so bad they closed up the store.
“You’ve spelled out a perfect reason why it’s pathetic, rick. Cupertino should NEVER let this happen again. How many people received iPods for Christmas and had this as their very first experience with Apple?”
You got it.
If people pulled their iPods out of the box on Christmas morning and they immediately burst into flames, MDN readers would be saying how great it was that Apple thought enough ahead to keep people’s hands toasty warm on Christmas, and to provide a nice fire for Christmas morning atmosphere.
There’s no time that it’s good when a customer pulls a brand new product out of the box, tries to use it and it doesn’t work. With Apple it’s doubly bad, since that’s one of their key selling propositions.
My goodness you yanks are a bunch of whiners. Complaing cause you had to wait get music on Christmas day. Do you do that when you have to deal with traffic, lines up, crowds during the Christmas shopping RUSH.
WAHHHHHHH let me call you a WAAAAAAHHHHHmbulance.
Road Warrior:
Whiners? Aren’t Apple products and services just supposed to work? If I wanted services and software that don’t work all the time without hassle I’d go back to using Windows and Linux. Perhaps I’d even buy a Zune. But this is Apple!!! I do expect better from them. You’re probably just a fanboy who sees Apple through “can-do-no-wrong” glasses. In your eyes maybe my comment was whining. Oh, wait — scratch that — I forgot that you can’t see!
Oh, and by the way — I avoided the traffic, the lines, and the Christmas shopping rush by buying direct from Apple on line.
Rick:
Yes they are “supposed” to work. Just like everything else that is man made there are congestions. Could be a line up at a fast food store or a traffic jam due to large groups of people. It does not mean that the food store, nor the roads “fail” to work, they simply are limits to the volume they can handle. You can whine or you can smile and do what you can to move on.
That’s the difference between yanks and the free world though. Many of us have a “in a hurry, forget it attitude and enjoy picking up sexy women in lineups” rather than your so called “I WANT IT NOW.” arrogance.
If ya wait a bit, you might discover patience.
But since you are so good at “seeing” by all means do point out some success story by a company that alleviates a potential rush, Christmas being a known clog.
I am a big fanboy of Apple yes indeed. But ya know what, I am an even bigger fanboy of Mother Nature, so watch how you shove the hot air “all seeing dude” cause it’s payback time. Hope you don’t live on the coast.