Apple is rejecting me

November 15, 2009 7:16 AM

For the past few days (maybe longer, I'm not sure), I have not been able to connect to apple.com or the iTunes store, nor update software with Software Update, on my 10.4.11 iMac, although I can connect to the rest of the 'net.

Apple.com just hangs; iTunes and Software Update tell me that there is something wrong with my network connection. I've had my firewall on, but turning it off has had no effect.

I'd scour the Apple forums but I can't get to them.

posted by bricoleur to computers & internet (4 comments total)

I had something similar happen, though I don't remember trying the iTunes store or Software Update. Basically, Apple and a few other random sites like Amazon.com were suddenly broken for me. (Amazon wouldn't load images, for instance.) I noticed all of the web resources that failed to load were actually mirrored using Akamai, and that Akamai was assigning me a local mirror that was bogus (couldn't ping it, might not have even DNS-resolved).

It was a weird form of web exile, and I ended up using Akamai's contact form to beg them to fix it (told them my IP address and the mirror I was getting). Shortly afterwards the problem—which had been going on for several days—went away. So while it's a long shot, it might be worth trying to find other Akamai-hosted sites and seeing they load. Or at least running traceroute images.apple.com in Terminal.
posted by serathen at 7:34 AM on November 15, 2009

Some troubleshooting suggestions:

- Try another computer on your network
- Try changing your DNS server to OpenDNS
- Open a terminal and type "sudo pico /etc/hosts". If there's an apple.com entry, remove it and save (Ctrl+O, Ctrl+C)
- If you have little snitch installed, turn it off or uninstall
posted by CharlesV42 at 7:54 AM on November 15, 2009

Also, via horsemuth:

"can't hurt to flush the DNS. dscacheutil -flushcache"
posted by CharlesV42 at 7:56 AM on November 15, 2009

Thanks. It was DNS; don't know why I didn't think of that before I posted.
posted by bricoleur at 8:56 AM on November 15, 2009