In an article by AppAdvice, their fine staff has unraveled the controversy surrounding the dialog that many of those who were running the Beta 3.0 firmware had seen that indicated that they would have to re-purchase applications that they had already purchased if they attempted to update (or reinstall) them on their iPhone.
As it turns out, it’s the result of a new feature that ties your iPhone to your iTunes account.
Apple essentially is preventing people from logging in to a friend’s account on their own iPhone and “reinstalling” applications that they in fact never bought. You will now be required to synchronize your iPhone with the new iTunes so that your iPhone knows which account is valid for that iPhone. Apparently, many developers did not get the notice to update to the new iTunes – which might have prevented some of the panic.
So, it looks like we can all rest assured that we won’t be forced to sync with iTunes to re-download apps – although one cannot help but feel that Apple might have at least posted something somewhere to clarify this instead of letting everyone quasi-panic.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m not 100% clear on what this means.
I have 2 iTunes a/c in different regions (yes, I know this isn’t allowed by Apple in their Terms of Service, but it is the only way I can get games as our AppStore doesn’t have any).
Will I still be able to use both accounts on my iTunes in order to get apps from the other region AppStore and then sync these to my iPhone? I really hope so as I have paid for some which aren’t in my ‘home’ AppStore.
It sounds like you will not be able to switch between them on the phone. But I would imagine you could still sync against two different iTunes Libraries. BTW, what is the name of this "land of no apps"?
I got a reply to my question on the original site from the article author which read "As long as your itunes is “authorized” for both accounts you will have no issues switching back and forth and downloading apps from both accounts. If you can download apps and install them from itunes then your phone will download apps and install from device as well. The fact your accounts are multi-regional shouldn’t make any difference."
BTW: the country is South Africa where we have certain categories just not in our store, ie NO games, we do have games if the developer has classified it as entertainment. VERY annoying!! Is some stupid legal issue that I can't recall off hand.
I've only tested this with free apps, and I do get another iTunes confirmation email for apps I've already downloaded when I do…. too nervous to try with paid apps. But this article is interesting. Still not entirely sure what the new dialog popup means, though…
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