Playing iTune rentals on my iPhone

Well this is an interesting experience. Today I rented "The Dark Knight" animated movie from iTunes. It's quite interesting the way that they handle the DRM and the expiery of the license.

As you can see from the screen shot you are reminded in no uncertain terms of the amount of time that you have to watch the movie.

iPhone activation is blocked due to iTunes store being overloaded.

The iTunes store that is used for activation of the iPhone is down. This is probably due to the demand. I am shocked that Apple did not do a better job of planning infrastructure for this event.


Unfortunately this impacts both iPhone V1 and V2 owners. For a V1 owner the experience is particularly frustrating as you end up getting your phone bricked until the store becomes available again.


The sequence of events that occurs resulting in this is as follows:
1. iTunes detects that a new version (7.7.0.43) is available and prompts you to upgrade.
2. After the upgrade iTunes detects that a new version of the iPhone firmware (2.0) is available.
3. The new version is downloaded and installed on the iPhone.
4. iTunes fails to contact the iTunes store for activation and your phone is now bricked until the activation server comes back online.


You will know if you are a victim of this issue as you will see the following dialogues in iTunes:
1. iTunes displays “Accessing iTunes Store…” indefinatly
2. iTunes eventually displays the “We could not complete your iTunes Store request. The network connection times out” error dialogue.


Rest assured the issue is not on your side (assuming you have internet connectivity) but is with the iTunes activiation server not taking any more requests.