I don't know if this limit was imposed by Apple or by the carriers. I also don't know if this limit is due to a technical limitation (3G network congestion, 3G bandwidth usage, recovering from a failed or corrupt download) or something else. My parents have yet to exceed 1GB of cellular usage so it's not like I don't have the 3G bandwidth to download apps.
When "Need For Speed Shift" went on sale for $0.99, I was able to buy it at that price, but had to wait until I could connect to a WiFi network before I could download it to my iPad. There is currently a greyed-out icon titled "Waiting" and the iPad nags me for my iTunes password every time it wakes up and after I enter the password, it pops-up a dialog box with the 20MB warning. This gets really annoying very quickly.
Why can't the iPad check if it's on a WiFi network before asking for the iTunes password for a pending download? It's a simple check.
Update June 8, 2011: This article is the second-most popular posting on this blog (60+ hits since Dec, 2010; averaging 10 hits per month). This is a problem that Apple needs to look into now that iOS5 is un-tethered from a PC. I have a few suggestions:
- Increase the limit to 50MB (my parents have never exceeded 1GB of their 5GB monthly 3G data plan)
- Allow more than 50MB only if the user agrees to a pop-up dialog box (which would show current data usage and how much headroom in the data-plan still exists)
- If you feel strongly about this matter, please send Apple feedback on this issue at the iPad Feedback page.
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