Newsstand not updating in background

[djmodifyd]

Not sure which forum this needs to go in, so I appologize if this is not the correct spot.

I have The Daily (subscriber) on my ipad in newstand. It used to updated on its own like newsstand is supposed to (every morning it would say "new" and I'd have the latest issue). The last few days though it is no longer doing that. I am connected to wifi, and have hard rebooted the ipad. Setting in the store section of settings.app is toggled to on for the daily to download new content.

Today I uninstalled and reinstalled the daily from the app store, but it did not act like a new installation when I opened it (IE it did not ask if i wanted to allow it to download new versions).

Any suggestions?

Thanks

 

[jsh1120]

The unattended background updating of Newsstand has been widely reported as unreliable. As is typical in cases such as this there is lots of finger pointing going on between Apple and the publications that use Newsstand. All you can do at this point is to wait for the parties to straighten out a buggy feature.

In the meantime, download each issue that fails to download automatically. But keep in mind that you cannot exit the application during the manual download. If you do, the download will stop.

 

[matrix07]

The Daily on my iPad stopped automatic update yesterday. Before that, it still worked.

 

[jsh1120]

The Daily on my iPad stopped automatic update yesterday. Before that, it still worked.

I've had several New Yorkers update automatically and at least one that did not.

It may be that the Daily experienced a glitch but from what I can tell, the following seems to be true. If an unattended background download fails for any reason (i.e. server problems from the download source, bandwidth contention timeout, etc.) the Newsstand is not equipped to retry. Instead, a particular issue has to be downloaded manually in the foreground.

I wouldn't be surprised to hear that The Daily download is working again and a bit later that another publication has failed. Furthermore, since large downloads are inherently more likely to fail and there is (currently) no provision for retrying, the problems are likely to continue and to be intermittent.

 

[matrix07]

I've had several New Yorkers update automatically and at least one that did not.

It may be that the Daily experienced a glitch but from what I can tell, the following seems to be true. If an unattended background download fails for any reason (i.e. server problems from the download source, bandwidth contention timeout, etc.) the Newsstand is not equipped to retry. Instead, a particular issue has to be downloaded manually in the foreground.

I wouldn't be surprised to hear that The Daily download is working again and a bit later that another publication has failed. Furthermore, since large downloads are inherently more likely to fail and there is (currently) no provision for retrying, the problems are likely to continue and to be intermittent.

You're right. After manually updated yesterday, today it's back to automatically updated itself again.

 

[Bernard SG]

Yep, this feature is acting weird. Definitely not up to Apple's usual standards of quality and reflects poorly on the company, especially Scott Forstall who presented it so enthusiastically.

 

[jsh1120]

Yep, this feature is acting weird. Definitely not up to Apple's usual standards of quality and reflects poorly on the company, especially Scott Forstall who presented it so enthusiastically.

It accomplished its purpose. The objective was to promote subscriptions through a bait and switch free app/paid content approach and to force customers to use the feature by making it very difficult to eliminate from a home screen. Initial subscriptions are way up and Apple gets 30% of every subscription. Even better, when it fails it enables Apple and publishers to point fingers at one another. No wonder Apple was enthusiastic.

 

[matrix07]

Yep, this feature is acting weird. Definitely not up to Apple's usual standards of quality and reflects poorly on the company, especially Scott Forstall who presented it so enthusiastically.

I suspect it might related to battery. Kind of like it won't update if battery not more than certain % but I have no proof though.

 

[dreamsburnred]

The unattended background updating of Newsstand has been widely reported as unreliable. As is typical in cases such as this there is lots of finger pointing going on between Apple and the publications that use Newsstand. All you can do at this point is to wait for the parties to straighten out a buggy feature.

In the meantime, download each issue that fails to download automatically. But keep in mind that you cannot exit the application during the manual download. If you do, the download will stop.

Which is absurdly annoying.

 

[djmodifyd]

ended up removing and reinstalling the daily via itunes and that solved the problem

 

[jsh1120]

Just an update. The latest issue of the New Yorker (a double issue of almost 250mg) failed the unattended download this week on my iPad. That makes, as I recall, three of the last six issues to fail.

Considering that the unattended download feature is virtually the only benefit I get from Apple's version of the Publishers Clearing House, it continues to be very annoying.

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ended up removing and reinstalling the daily via itunes and that solved the problem

Actually, I doubt that it "solved the problem." The problem is intermittent and will likely crop up again.

 

[djmodifyd]

Just an update. The latest issue of the New Yorker (a double issue of almost 250mg) failed the unattended download this week on my iPad. That makes, as I recall, three of the last six issues to fail.

Considering that the unattended download feature is virtually the only benefit I get from Apple's version of the Publishers Clearing House, it continues to be very annoying.

----------




Actually, I doubt that it "solved the problem." The problem is intermittent and will likely crop up again.

You are correct.
Was most likely a coincidence. It will work most of the time now but every once and a while it doesn't download

Oh well

 

[jsh1120]

You are correct.
Was most likely a coincidence. It will work most of the time now but every once and a while it doesn't download

Oh well

Yup... "It just (sometimes) works."