Leopard Parental Controls causes no connection to iTunes Store

Question

Level 1

25 points

Leopard Parental Controls causes no connection to iTunes Store

I upgraded my family iMac to 10.5.2 and set up my two girls' accounts with Parental Controls...only to find that neither of them could get to the iTunes Store any more! It just sits forever with the "Accessing iTunes Store" and the barberpole progress bar.

The only thing that I have activated in Parental Controls are the time fences: everything else is wide open.

If I disable Parental Controls for either account, then the iTunes Store works perfectly. Re-enable Parental Controls and iTunes Store is inaccessible again. It's totally reproducible here. The Parental Controls in iTunes are all turned off on these accounts.

Is anyone else seing this? Any possible solutions for my kids being able to use the iTunes Store with Leopard's Parental Controls on?

Various, Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on May 6, 2008 9:48 PM

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Answer 1

May 7, 2008 2:55 PM in response to JohnDCCIU

I've had trouble with this as well. Unfortunately, there is currently not a solution. It is now a known Leopard bug from the last update. What's frustrating is that the Parental Control settings don't seem to matter. Just the simply fact that it is a managed account. Leopard should allow all activity from iTunes and then you can use the iTunes internal controls to restrict.

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Answer 2

JohnDCCIU Author

Level 1

25 points

May 7, 2008 7:39 PM in response to TardisDriver

Thanks for the confirmation. I'll see what Apple Support has to say.

(Love the name, BTW....I just rediscovered the new Dr. Who on BBCA after many years!)

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Answer 3

Jun 17, 2008 5:13 PM in response to JohnDCCIU

I just ran into the same problem with my daughter's account on a new iMac.

After an hour with Apple Tech support on the phone, the resolution was to disable parental controls (like you, I had just used time constraints), so that iTunes could access the store.

Likewise, the parental controls were causing issues with Firefox (not Safari) accessing certain password controlled websites (Webkinz and a school district email account).

DISABLING parental controls is the only "workaround" at the moment. Per my support person, Apple is "tracking" this issue.

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Answer 4

Jun 18, 2008 4:08 PM in response to JohnDCCIU

A Resolution:

If you have a "Managed Account with Parental Controls turned on", who wishes to browse the iTunes Store and/or buy music there, they may be able to do it via the search field while iTunes seems to be trying to connect to the iTunes home page.

By entering valid band-names/song-titles in the search field, one can go to various parts of the store, and even purchase and download music.

It seems that the Parental Controls are just blocking the iTunes Stores’ Home Page or access to the home page after a successful search return.

This is some help until Apple can fix the problem.

In this way you do not have to turn off Parental Controls for that account to access the iTunes store.

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Answer 5

NHBadger

Level 1

0 points

Jun 19, 2008 6:49 PM in response to JohnDCCIU

Fellow posters,

I can't thank you enough for your dialog on this subject. I had done the same issue as "John" for my daughters account. I have been stymied for nearly a week working with Apple Support and nothing they suggested works. At least now I have a clue as to what is going on. Thanks for filling in the gaps, I appreciate it.

So the way I understand it, you have to remove the parental controls on the user account. Can you leave them invoked within iTunes and still get it to work? Do we know if Apple is tracking this bug or actively working to fix it?

Thanks again.

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Answer 6

jkwuc89

Level 1

35 points

Jun 20, 2008 11:24 AM in response to NHBadger

I verified this issue on my iMac at home by doing the following on OS X 10.5.3:
1. Created a new user account
2. Logged onto the new account, opened iTunes and went to the store. All worked as expected.
3. Switched to an admin account and enabled parental controls for the new user account.
4. Went back to the new user account, opened iTunes and went to the store. This time, the store home page would not load.

Hopefully, this will get fixed soon because my child received an iTunes Gift Card and was unable to get into the store to use it until I disabled parental controls on her account.

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Answer 7

Lomnocht

Level 1

0 points

Jun 22, 2008 9:03 AM in response to jkwuc89

this *****, because i have a user account set up just to use itunes (i have over 50,000 mp3's) and i wanted to restrict this account to help keep my music library safe... this issue with parental controls and managed accounts ***** because now i cannot accomplish this.

QUESTION...
is there a way to share my itunes database with all users on a imac? I want separate databases, so that if any user purchases music or movies it will be stored in a central don't al location and central database.

thoughts?

peace...
joe
www.lomnocht.com

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Answer 8

pjEvan

Level 1

0 points

Jun 23, 2008 10:45 AM in response to jkwuc89

Is there any place to email a complaint about this? Is there an ETA for a fix, do you know?

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Answer 9

KNS49

Level 1

0 points

Jun 24, 2008 1:06 PM in response to JohnDCCIU

I am having the same issue. Contacted Apple Support and was told that this was the normal mode of operation. Total bunch of garbage. Why would simply enabling parental controls block access to the iTunes store home page. It worked in every version prior to 10.5.3. If anyone from Apple is listening my case # is 100888514. Fix your problems now.

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Answer 10

Jun 25, 2008 8:33 PM in response to KNS49

Same problem on both of my kids computers. I was able to sneak in thru the side door by the 'search' method mentioned. Only problem I have is that both kids received $25 gift cards and I can't enter them unless I can get to the home page.

This definitely isn't the way it is supposed to work. iTunes has its own built in parental controls. Having a managed account should not return an error code when trying to access the store.

Also ma not able to access secure sites using any browser.

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Answer 11

Jun 26, 2008 1:48 PM in response to JohnDCCIU

Same problem here. Parental Controls on = iTunes Store off.

Dang.

Randy

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Answer 12

jxc100

Level 1

8 points

Jun 29, 2008 4:51 PM in response to JohnDCCIU

I think its all related - since 10.5.3 my kids can't connect to any website unless I disable Parental Controls. There is no dialog to request permission, and web-sites already in the Bookmarks bar simply go to a "server not found" page. Where can a bug report be entered?

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Answer 13

Jun 30, 2008 10:38 PM in response to jxc100

Just updated to 10.5.4 and problem still exists. No connection to iTunes store for my son. Apple seems as though they do not care because they already have your money from your iTunes gift cards.

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Answer 14

Peterpw

Level 1

20 points

Jul 11, 2008 11:12 AM in response to STANLEYYY

Hello all,

Very frustrating issue! As earlier suggested, the only workaround seems to be to use the search field in iTunes - this will get you into the store where you can move around anywhere but the home page. The home page is the only one blocked by this bug.

Hoping for a fix quickly - although I'd rather see MobileMe and iPhoneG3 activation issues taken care of quickly!

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Answer 15

scottfg

Level 1

17 points

Jul 19, 2008 4:38 PM in response to JohnDCCIU

I have another problem with parental controls - when you add time in the dialog and it switches back to the user's desktop, it is unresponsive and within seconds it switches back to the login page; you do it again and it loops back again - making impossible to add time.

I have looked through several forums and I find no actual answers to the parental controls problems and it is very unacceptable that Apple takes our money for the fancy new operating system and then it doesn't work! AND they don't even have the courtesy to post something on their website to explai the status of fixing it.

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