Apple’s servers loaded as users get “Software Update Failed” error message while installing iOS 7

BY Jason

Published 18 Sep 2013

ios 7 isntall error message

Apple publicly released iOS 7, the biggest change to iOS since the iPhone, earlier today, and it seems the company’s servers aren’t able to handle the huge surge in traffic. Users are reporting failed downloads as a result of the excessive server load on Apple’s CDN.

The error message, titled “Software Update Failed,” says “An error occurred downloading iOS 7.0.” There’s nothing you, as a user can do from your end to get the download working apart from waiting for the the server load to go down.

Users initially experienced issues while downloading iTunes 11.1 too, but the issue seems to have resolved now.

We’ll keep you posted about the state of Apple’s servers. Tell us in the comments below if you’ve managed to do an OTA upgrade to iOS 7.

Update: Direct download links for iOS have been published, so if you’re having problems doing an OTA upgrade, you can do an iTunes restore.