iTunes downloads SLOW AS ****

Evidently the word he11 offends certain sensibilities.

But that was the word - not the stronger one you whisper under your breath when you try to download a podcast.

LOL. OK. The people who MODERATE this Apple SUPPORT forum (by removing my subsequent explanation that ** was a reference to a place of eternal suffering) - and no one else - was able to insert a link or helpful instructions in 8 pages of that thread that explains the dismal performance of iTunes in Windoze.

My iTunes ran all night. It downloaded ~ 200 MB. Once I refreshed the downtrottled third download, it zipped along fine too, downloading ~ 2 GB while I wrote this before sunrise. With making no changes to any configuration, power-cycling, rebooting, dumping cache, "opening up" firewall ports - or any action on my part except initiating an iTunes connection when most people in the US are sleeping.

So if it isn't Texas, or Windoze, or Time Warner, or the DNS cache, or the firewall ports being filtered - and I can reliably replicate the problem concurrent with the higher traffic hours of the day in North America.

The download that ground to a halt sometime in the middle of the night didn't pick up speed until I woke up, paused it, and restarted it. It didn't time out or issue an error code I could contact Apple and complain about - it just sat there for hours apparently doing nothing.

When I Googled the phrase "Apple downloads slow as heck" and limited my search to news in the last month, I found two stories (one perhaps quoting another) suggesting an unidentified source at Apple was pointing a finger at Google DNS servers and later stumbled on a cranky customer who bought the Apple TV gizmo/service apparently quoting someone at Apple support as blaming Netflicks.

Feh. Even if either are true, the bottom line is that Apple positioned themselves as a content provider. If they allow third parties or contractors to deliver, we customers sure as heck don't care. We want the content we paid Apple for. I've been able to conclusively prove this poor downstream performance isn't related to OS, hardware, ISP, LAN congestion, or type of Intert00bs connection. It's specific to Apple delivering content downstream.

It isn't just iTunes. I am responsible for my company's IT and I have been unable to use the Apple updater to update Safari or Quicktime for a month on them pesky Windoze machines. Same behavior: download starts at the speed you expect then grinds to a halt and just does nothing. The office has vDSL fiber to the node with no bandwidth issues except one: Apple.

So we uninstalled Safari company-wide except on the machine I use to check new web page rendering. The Windoze version had become a huge pig of CPU cycles recently - worse than Internet Exploder - and what's the point of even having it as an end user option if I try every week to download the new (more secure) version and the Apple server chokes?

Instead of using the updater for Quicktime, I went to the Quicktime download page and used Firefox to download the new version for internal distribution. I had to pause and resume it about 6 times, but finally got a copy to manually distribute over the LAN to each client.

I will admit I occasionally get great downstream connects. When I was traveling in central Illinois last month on hotel WiFi (that runs about 5% as fast as my office vDSL) iTunes downloads were zippy. But that's an exception, not my everyday experience.

We aren't perfect, so that giant screen next to Mr. Jobs said to us. OK. Imperfection is job security to we the geeks. I recall when ISDN was a new and wobbly telecom service, as many new technologies are. Unfortunately, Apple is starting to acquire the reputation that we who wrestled with making those connects stable turned that acronym into:

It Still Does Nothing.

Upgraded the old MacBook to Snow Leopard. The out of the box disk of course doesn't include the latest fixes.

Verified download speed > 11 MBps DURING Software Update. Software update says my 1.49 GB patch download will complete in 579 hours.

Really?

I note that that my reference to Apple downloads being he11 was quickly Moderated (removed) then unexpectedly restored after I complained that obviously Apple reads these forums, they just expect us to help ourselves.

To dialup speed downloads of Apple product. I have been able to reinstall several apps on the same laptop using a Windoze box on the same LAN than can download dmg files over 10 MB in moments. Using the same connection through the same switch.