Apple and the Cloud have never got along well, so I don't think this is a move from Apple to make your life miserable, rather I think it's just that their account system is well... shit, but there are ways to work around it.
I was in exactly the same boat a little over a year ago, so I will simply write this with the assumption that not much has changed. When I was moving to the states from Sweden I did some research into what to do with my iTunes account, and found a large number of discussions going on about the subject. The common suggestion was that once you change region, you should do a clean install on your iOS device or OSX and install it in the new region from scratch. If you change region and try to update things will get messy pretty fast, or so I was told.
He's right that you lose all records of installed apps, but if you try to buy them again in the new region, Apple does recognize that you already own the app and does not charge for it again. It's a shame that things on the internet are region-bound, it's one thing I hope will disappear in the not too distant future, but for now such is life (applies to music/movies as well).
Apart from the above annoyance though it has worked great so far, my account is the same as if I had created a US one from scratch. Also, i'm pretty sure I could update my US bought apps and rent movies on iTunes when I was in sweden 2 months ago, so not sure what the whole IP thing is.
I was in exactly the same boat a little over a year ago, so I will simply write this with the assumption that not much has changed. When I was moving to the states from Sweden I did some research into what to do with my iTunes account, and found a large number of discussions going on about the subject. The common suggestion was that once you change region, you should do a clean install on your iOS device or OSX and install it in the new region from scratch. If you change region and try to update things will get messy pretty fast, or so I was told.
He's right that you lose all records of installed apps, but if you try to buy them again in the new region, Apple does recognize that you already own the app and does not charge for it again. It's a shame that things on the internet are region-bound, it's one thing I hope will disappear in the not too distant future, but for now such is life (applies to music/movies as well).
Apart from the above annoyance though it has worked great so far, my account is the same as if I had created a US one from scratch. Also, i'm pretty sure I could update my US bought apps and rent movies on iTunes when I was in sweden 2 months ago, so not sure what the whole IP thing is.