"An Error has Occurred. The request timed out." - OS X 10.8.2

Same thing happened to me trying to install to install OS X 10.12.6 today. Went directly to Apple site and downloading from there seems to be working: Download macOS Sierra 10.12.6 Update

This problem is due to an issue on Apple's end. What that problem is is unclear, but when the same thing happened a month or so ago, one expert I know of was theorizing that it may have been a denial-of-service attack on Apple's servers.

In any case, there's only one thing you can do to solve the problem: wait. Give it a couple days and check for updates again.

The problem that was occurring at the time of your original post has cleared up now. Your problem must be unrelated. Do you have any anti-virus software or other internet security software installed? Have you tested this on other networks?

Hello Graham - I have exactly the same problem and it is driving me crazy. Went to Genius Bar today and had the image re-loaded and the minute I get home, I have the same issue again. I have also used a completely different network and have the same problem

Maybe this will help:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2139500?answerId=10114455022#10114455022

Hey Gents, I have the same problem with update, went to the MAC shop but they don't know the answer other than installing OS again. This drives me nuts and i don't understand why this error keeps coming. BTW, manual updated with download and installing works fine. Also the rest of the internet activities goed perfect. Please advice - Luuk

Hi Luuk - I went to a different Genius Bar and all he did was to go to Library Preferences, sent to trash the file com.apple.appstore.plist and then restarted. The App Store worked fine after that

Hi Steward,

Thanks for the quick reply!

I went true the disk but find out that the file yo mentioned is not on my disk at all. So this could be he reason.

I rebooted my laptop and did run the update but without success, same error. Looked at the files and it seems that the system is not buidling the file at all. any suggestions?

Thanks again

Luuk

Hi Luuk

Try this command in 'Terminal'. It should find the file in your home directory '/Users/<username>'

find ~ -name "com.apple.appstore.plist" -ls

And Stewart's solution above worked for me. Thanks!

Will something like this work on an iPhone and where would I locate it? My App Store was working just fine and this last week it's been slower and slower, plus difficulties with downloading and updates. Both my downloads and updates start and then pop up a 'can't install at this time'. I thought it might b my storage space so I started deleting. Well I have plenty of space now and still get same problem.

Now over the last two days I will type in a search to reinstall the apps that I removed and the App Store tells me request timed out.

Help please

You can try to close AppStore, relaunch it and choose Updates once more. In my case I repeated this for 4 times and then iI've got it.