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Level 1

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iPhone applications no longer work

I have had my iPhone for over a year and never had the troubles I am having now. I have installed dozens of apps and have the same update problem as all of you in this discussion. Now, most of my apps will not work at all! The past week, I have had apps crash and the iPhone would go back to the home screen. A reboot, by holding down the power button until asked to turn off the iPhone would usually solve this, but now, after several reboots, none of the apps are working now. On top of this, yesterday, I was stuck in the Phone app. I could select a contact and view a map of the address, but I could never get back to the home screen or select any other app. What was even worse was the fact that I could not reboot no matter how long I held down the power button. I had to hold both the power and home buttons which did reboot, but I lost all my music and videos. I am not looking forward to going through the entire process of installing everything again! Web apps still work fine as well as all of the Apple apps, but none of the free or purchased apps from the App Store work now. I think I'll try deleting all apps off the phone and from my Mobile Applications folder except for the $20 worth of paid apps that I have and start from scratch. If that does not work, I'll try a complete Restore which is a last resort since that involves hours of resetting preferences, app locations, etc.. By the way, what is with the hour long iPhone backup when synching through iTunes. Is this a bug in the new version of iTunes? I do not recall long backups before the iTunes update. I hope we get iTunes 7.7.2 and iPhone 2.0.1 soon. I hate to say this, but I miss the old reliable and bug-free iPhone version 1.1.4!!! Any insight from those of you reading this would be much appreciated.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.4.11), Original 8 Gig iPhone, iTunes 7.7.1

Posted on Aug 2, 2008 11:40 AM

718 replies

Aug 6, 2008 3:59 PM in response to pmonahan

I've been having the same nightmare time with this, and the problem came back even after wiping the phone (and my data - the most recent backup was reported by iTunes 7.7.1 as "corrupt"). Things started going wrong immediately after installing the iTunes 7.7.1 update on my PPC.

The problem seemed to clear up initially after wiping, but came back after updating a purchased app. Any amount of restarting, resetting (power+home buttons for > 10 secs) and resetting via Settings did nothing.

Installing the 2.0.1 software/firmware update and an app delete-reload on the phone seem to fix things until I updated another (purchased) app, then the apps stopped working and the music "vanished" again.

I downloaded a randomly chosen free app from "Utilities", and after that everything started working again automagically. Not long after that, the phone started playing up with the display locking on the bundled Apple phone app, and the iPod playback once stopped couldn't be restarted via headset.

The power button also refused to turn the phone off, but the power+home button combo seemed to unhitch things and get the phone going again.

Since then, I've purchased an app, and things seem to be functioning normally, although no updates have appeared on the App Store yet to pressure test it. I'm not so sure now that it is a permissions problem, but have no way to explicitly test that (has anyone managed to look at the file system using, e.g., telnet from a Mac?).

Fingers x-ed that this has done the trick, but I'm not holding my breath. I must say that this is the worst problem that I've experienced with Apple, including the early Leopard updates (my Leopard problems were trivial compared with some that others experienced, and relatively easily fixed).

Aug 6, 2008 4:36 PM in response to Alexander Newman

Me too, Upgraded the iphone firmware on Monday night and now no Apps will work. I have done 3 restores now and spent 1 hour on phone with Apple. Their bottom line is I should call the App author which I think is just great given there was no problem before Mondays upgrade.

So now I cannot use Apps.

Aug 6, 2008 4:44 PM in response to Sickofpcs

After reading more of this and other Threads I tried downloading Apps directly from the phone apps icon and so far both Apps downloaded work fine (Ipint and Currency)

So far so good.

Adam H

Level 1

0 points

Aug 6, 2008 5:36 PM in response to pmonahan

Count me in... Nothing seems to work aside from reinstalling the app from the phone. This STINKS.

hale-yes

Level 1

0 points

Aug 6, 2008 5:52 PM in response to pmonahan

Just came from Genius Bar and the tech there took my phone, hooked it up to the laptop they use to activate new iPhones and totally wiped it out. I then plugged it in to my laptop and checked off what I wanted to load WITHOUT using the backup that itunes does. All apps are working again. I hope this is not going to be a routine. 2.01 seems to have stablized a couple of things, but hasn't helped with the car pairing/bluetooth echo. Come on APPLE, I'm waiting...

Aug 6, 2008 7:20 PM in response to drakee

Thanks...

Worked for me.....

---warren

Aug 7, 2008 12:33 AM in response to pmonahan

Upgraded to 2.0.1 and all of the roughly 35 isntalled apps took a dump. I started by deleting the app that always gave me the most consistent iphone reboots - (Pocket Express), re-installed it, tested it, (worked), tried the others, - no joy. Then deleted / re-installed next most difficult......NYtimes. Tested it - it worked - tested all other apps and they are now working again. Previous results are not promised to all........Very disappointed with Apple, MobileMe, iphone 2.0 - slow & buggy: 2.0.1 causing issues and not a word from apple.

Aug 7, 2008 2:49 AM in response to 2.0-Blue-Screen

Wrt to my post about crossing of fingers, guess what? That didn't work. I did a test download of a "1 dollar" app, and the downloaded apps have stopped working again. Phone off & on again twice, still the same deal; d/l-ed a free app, still nonfunctional, i.e., no apps, no music.

I did get a reply to a complaint lodged with Apple (which is something to be grateful for, I suppose), but they merely gave me the Official List of Things To Do, which I have already tried (in various combinations) with no lasting success.

One thing I've noticed, cf 2.0-Blue-Screen's comment above, is that the phone seems to be slower with the 2.0.1 update (debug code?), and Safari has got a bit more unstable than it was in 2.0 (it was pretty dodgy there too).

I still think it's a permissions thing, and am going to try some experiments.

Aug 7, 2008 6:01 AM in response to Alexander Newman

Same Problem as all of you. Authorizing did not work for me. My music shows up as no content. I have been using a touch for a while now (works great) and picked up a iphone 3g yesterday and its been slow, unresponsive and a complete waist of time (even on 2.0.1). Do you know how many hours I have waisted trying to get this to work the way its suppose to? Apple dont turn into Microsoft; I dont pay you what seems like a lot of money just so I can waist my time.

I deselected sync music and the sync was quick, under five seconds. Click it to sync the music back and it seems to be putting it back on. I will let you know if this solves my no content issue. As for the apps I might just unsync then resync. Either way, I have things I need to do today and spending 3 hours doing this is not how I should be rewarded for dropping all this cash on this product.

Joel

kbacon

Level 1

43 points

Aug 7, 2008 6:07 AM in response to pmonahan

OK, I have, restarted, reset, reinstalled, reauthorized, restored, ad nauseum and nothing works! None of my App Store apps work. I am one of the biggest apple supporters out there and I am getting really angry.

I even did the 2 hour, delete all settings and data process from the phone last night, unauthorized and reauthorized my itunes, and then reset up my phone as new and resynced everything last night and still nothing works.

Apple has a real disaster on their hands with this.

Aug 7, 2008 6:11 AM in response to kbacon

I Could not agree more.

Reinstalling the audio still shows up as no content. How can you sync all that media and have it say this is none. Absurd.

I Steve Jobs's phone is having the same issues so we can get a fix just a little bit faster. Im not wishing anything bad on Jobs, Im just saying.

Aug 7, 2008 6:51 AM in response to pmonahan

I was having the same problems. All the 3rd party apps would open and then just go back to the home screen. I have 2.0.1 and all I did to fix it was download a new app (free), and then ALL of them worked again......

Aug 7, 2008 7:23 AM in response to stevedp86

Count me in as per other related thread... http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7812649#7812649

<Edited by Moderator>

I am now running the phone with ZERO third party apps after doing a "Erase all Content and Settings" low level wipe on the phone (takes 2 hours). I resynced to iTunes with apps removed (backed up of course) and DID NOT do a restore from a backup. The theory here is a memory management problem (corrupt app cache) when adding and/or removing apps to the device. It also seems that any interruption in the sync of an app. can pretty much cause this issue immediately (perhaps a more sever form of corruption). Updating the app cache "index" in memory seems to be a temporary fix, but corruptions eventually bring things to the point of not working again. Don't know about the App authorization and phoning-home part of the equation - it could also be a contributing factor.

I am not happy with this situation at all.

Aug 7, 2008 7:14 AM in response to meridiandevv

Screw this, Im just going to go back to web apps. Hey it worked for a year why not now. Maybe when apple gets stuff stable ill go back. Beejive and Facebook mobile here I come!

Aug 7, 2008 7:30 AM in response to MacCrazyMan1985

That's what I did. Perhaps chris pirillo (www.chrispirillo.com) will be doing the same as he also has this problem now.

iPhone applications no longer work