One imac, two iphones. one account has current itunes, other side will not download current itunes. Downloaded from apple website, did not help. help?

Question

We have one imac, two iphones, two imac/iphone user accounts. My account updated itunes and the phone quite easily. The other side will not update itunes  - it shows there is an update available, then says there is not. I tried installing from the apple store. It installed, but did not change the version of itunes active on the computer (we even turned it off and on, a la Windows).  SO we synced his phone with my side - it updated the OS, but otherwise restored the phone to factory settings. (he is not happy). So I tried to restore it from a backup on his side just to see what would happen, and of course it can't because the phone's software is more current that his itunes.
So we're in a maddening loop.  Factory settings, no updated itunes, no access to the backups.

Answer 1

The feed is fine. The problem lies with the URL for the media files. I checked the latest episode; the file will play in a browser, and as you say on the iTunes Store; but when subscribing there is an error message that the file requires authentication.
This would happen if you had password-protected it, but that would also appear when playing in a browser. The use of PHP or similar to serve the files is asking for trouble - sometimes it works, sometimes it upsets either the Store or subscribing or both. In this case it would seem that either the scripting is throwing iTunes and leading it to believe that a password is required (though it's not bringing up the pane asking for one), or your server is reacting differently to requests from the iTunes application to the way it reacts to requests from the Store or a browser, where the protocol is different.
It's not an iTunes problem. Strictly you should be putting the actual URL of the file in the feed, not a script; and you may need to check your server settings top make sure it allows downloading in iTunes as well as playing elsewhere.