iTunes Store down?

What I find a bit disturbing about the unavailability of the iTunes store is that the connection message puts the burden on the user; i.e. the issue is placed upon the consumers, clearly "Make sure YOUR network connection is active and try again", rather than apologizing for the inconvenience. Given Apple's technological prowess, I would have expected a better notification than one that insinuates the issue is with us.

As peculiar and annoying as this connection problem is (and embarrassing for Apple) I'd wager that 99.99% of the time if there is a connection issue with the iTunes Store, it is indeed a problem with the user's network connection. However, Apple's network diagnostics has only two levels: simplistic, and impenetrable. Let's hope this is corrected soon.

To repair permissions go to the applications folder--> utilities folder ---> double click Disk Utility, then click on your hard drive on the side and click the repair permissions button on the bottom center.

Now it is working. Good luck folks.

Repairing Permissions....

Launch Disk Utility in your Utilities folder inside the Applications folder. Select your main boot hard drive from the list on the left -- you will see two icons for each drive, the main hard drive and an icon labeled with the same name as your main hard drive. At top, select First Aid. Below the main window, you will see Repair Disk Permissions (at the bottom of the window). Click that button and let it run all the way through until it's done.

If the problem is Disk Permissions, why does it affect two different computers? That doesn't make sense to me, but I'll try it.

Like I thought, repairing Disk Permissions doesn't help at all. I still can't download.

At least for me, it is specific to this version of iTunes (7.4.2) and not a system-wide problems (permissions, DNS, network setting etc), since I can connect to the Store using iTunes 7.3 from the same computer (using a different account). Apple are aware of this issue and are working on it.

Does anyone have a solution to this problem yet? It has been down for almost a week.

It's been over a week for me, and no solution in sight. Apple sent me a couple of e-mails telling me it was fixed, and a couple of others thanking me for being patient.

Both e-mails were incorrect.