App Store consistently fails to update apps - but shows multiple installs

Dahveed,

your millions of happy and mostly satisfied customers is just as much a fairy tale as you call mine a totally unfounded exaggerated claim. You didn't call me moron, right. But you implied that my behavior is plain dumb, which is pretty much the same as calling me moron directly. Anyway, I can live with that. But if you suggest I keep my mouth shut then I suggest, you do the same too, unless you have an ADVICE THAT WORKS.

Paul

We know the metrics of how many folks have updated to OS X, they number in the hundreds of millions. There aren't even a few hundred folks reporting the issues that you have, neither here in the ASC nor in the many other Apple tech blogs in which I participate.

What you wish to interpret is your perogative, but what you claim that I imply by responding to your claims is false.

It is you who stated that you were finished speaking to the topic and I agree it's a good idea because now you not only make exagerated, unfounded claims about the topic, but now about me as well.

Hi Eskimo Boy,

sad to read this. Another one of those countless bugs... At least you have Safari 7.0.3, which is more essential than iBooks 1.0.1, IMHO.

Let's hope for the better with 10.9.3. Beta 6 seems to have been out a few days now. I hope it's released soon, but no sooner than when it is *thoroughly* tested.

Cheers,

Paul

Hi Dahveed

We have crossed paths elsewhere on this issue.

Why do you finger the ISP as a possible cause of these issues, and how could they have an effect on App Store syncing/updating?

I haven’t seen that suggested/explained before.

Thanks

There are a number of issues that can be the ISP; cap on large files, cap on the speed for downloading large files, poor DNS resolution, etc.

Yes but those are general issues with internet connection quality, and would apply to everything. My connection is slow compared to what you have in Dallas, but it works OK for everything else.

We are talking here of specific files - certain Apple files from the App Store. In fact those files download fine e.g. iMovie. The 2GB downloads, the programme works for a while and then suddenly the computer and the App Store decide it has to be downloaded again. Or in the case of the Safari 7.0.3, as with Eskimo, downloads, says its installing but somehow doesn't, although App Store thinks it has installed it (but its not quite sure because it continues to offer the update as well). and so on....

There are users here who have reported in the past that issues that they had with the MAS were tied to their ISP when they inquired of their ISP after I made the suggestion they may have an ISP issue. Which is why I suggest it when folks report the same or similar issues.

Dear Eskimo, Paul

I have had variants on these issues for some time. Sorry, no solutions yet. Here is some info.

I have the same problem now with Safari 7.0.3. I have tried installing twice, it is showing as having installed twice “in last 30 days”, and also still showing as an update; nevertheless mine remains fixed on 7.0.2.

Since Mavericks I have been having problems with App Store, notably the repeated downloading of Apple apps. I have posted on a number of threads here, but no solution. I decided to wait for 10.9.2.

When it came out, I did a completely clean install of 10.9.2. Hard disk wiped, reformatted and checked. OS install from USB drive. All apps reinstalled as latest versions from App Store, developer sites or in the case of Microsoft/Adobe from DVD. Only my data files were copied over manually from external drives. A clean install. No Time Machine, Recovery Disk. Within a week the repeated downloading of iMovie and iWork apps started again.

At this point I went to Apple Support. I received a lot of time from them, and was quickly passed up the chain as they said they knew of the issue but that they thought they had cured it in 10.9.2. They went through my logs, but couldn’t find anything particular except to say start again, do another clean install and install the apps progressively starting with the Apple apps to see if anything set it off. I did this, and finished without anything special happening (I have quite a few apps but nothing unusual, all mainstream). I updated to iBooks 1.0.1 and iTunes without problem. Then a week or two later the Pages 5.2, Numbers and Keynote updates showed up and the repeated downloading started again, including iMovie (before the 10.0.3 came along). And the Safari 7.0.3 update issue as described by OP.

As they requested I have sent my logs to Apple, but no reply yet. I will post if a solution is suggested.

I am sure Dahveed is correct in saying that millions are not seeing this, and since 10.9.2 the complaints here have dropped off, but I don’t agree its a trivial local issue. It feels like an issue at Apple’s end in the App Store. It seems like Mavericks has caused or more likely revealed some sort of fault/corruption in a small number of users App Store accounts. I think the info displayed in my windows of App Store is defined by the App Store not by the local computer; often on the Update page it is erroneous.

Another place you can check on versions installed is in the HD/Library/Receipts/InstallHistory.plist. Good luck.

Well I don't mind trying another ISP, very easy. But frankly I don't see how the ISP can impact these App Store issues, the act of downloading is not a problem.

Hi C Nugent,

yes, there are millions of happy people of course, but there are also a lot of people having problems. That's what I said. Also, had I problems with downloading then I would have tried to resolve that issue with my ISP and not come here in the first place. Downloading always went fine. My point was and is that this is a bug in the MAS update mechanism and Apple has to fix it, not me.

I solved the problem by downloading and installing the Safari 7.0.3 package and installing it manually. As for iBooks, I deleted the 1.0 in the Terminal (rm -rf /Applications/iBooks) and restored the 1.0.1 from a backup. Interestingly, it actually did the update once in the past but then went back to 1.0 after a full restore, for whatever reason is beyond me. So deleting and restoring just iBooks helped with this. I haven't had any duplicate updates reported ever since.

I did have a look in InstallHistory.plist at that time and it reported iBooks 1.0.1, which was wrong because 1.0 was installed.

Anyway, this issue is resvoled for me now because I went the brute force way which works.

Cheers,

Paul

Dahveed, you look very legal now...