App Store users experienced difficulty downloading apps for several hours this week as attempts to download were met with the following notice: ‘The item you tried to buy is no longer available.’
This message usually appears when content has been withdrawn from sale by Apple, but the error saw this applied to those that hadn’t, and the issue extended to users trying to update apps.
The issue was not limited to the app store, either. Disruptions iBooks and iTunes services were also reported, and users took to Twitter to express their frustration:
The item you tried to buy is no longer available.” Apparently #itunes #AppStore is down and won’t let anyone do anything! #apple #snafu
— Amazingly Andrew (@andrewyonda) September 3, 2014
First the iCloud security leak and now none of the apps in the AppStore are available. Rough couple of days for Apple… #AppStoreDown
— Arthur Gaudio (@arthurgaudio) September 3, 2014
According to Apple, the outage was down to a Google DNS issue, which was resolved at 16:33 PDT (00:33 BST) on September 2. However, complaints about the problem continued on twitter for several hours until approximately 22:00 PDT (06:00 BST). However, regular service has now resumed.