[UPDATE 1:31 PM: Apple’s system status page has updated to reflect the issue’s occurrence and resolution.]
Apple’s iMessage service appears to be experiencing widespread issues this afternoon. Numerous people on Twitter and several 9to5Mac staffers are having issues sending and receiving messages across iOS, Mac, and Apple Watch. While Apple has yet to confirm the issue on its System Status webpage, it does note that an outage affecting 0.5 percent of its user base occurred yesterday afternoon.
A wide variety of issues are being reported by users. Some are being told by the service that their messages were “not delivered,” even though the person on the other end did actually receive them. Additionally, many iMessages are defaulting back to text messages, while image/attachment sending also appears to be significantly affected by this issue.
Apple’s iMessage service is no stranger to service issues and the company generally reports the issues on its System Status webpage, just not always in the most timely of fashions. Either way, we’ll be sure to update this post when Apple officially acknowledges the problems.
Yesterday, Apple noted of an iMessage outage on the status site, saying “users may have been unable to send or download attachments in iMessage,” but that issues has supposedly been resolved since then.
Are you experiencing issues with iMessage this afternoon? If so, let us know in the comments what errors you’re seeing.
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Says not sent the but recipient is actually receiving them. Not updating across devices
I have my “send as SMS” turned on so I don’t really seem to be affected either way. I did notice some were going out green instead of blue.
On their website, Apple hasn’t state any reported issues.
http://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/
I am not sure if it is region related, as I am still able to send out messages via iMessage.
Uhm, the System Status webpage is a marketing page, not some dreamed up, updated every minute, live page, reflecting global status. Usually, yes, usually, it is updated after an outage has affected more than 8% of its users and has been since 5 hours. If they fix it before, it’ll simply show up afterwards, like it does now on .com but not on all of their TLD’s (for yesterdays outage, affecting 0.5%)
iMessage will say the user has read the message, and you close the app and it will say delivered. Messages will come in 5-10 minutes late depending on the sender and recipient.
No outage for me :)
I never use iMessage as its not reliable without a good data connection. As I have unlimited SMS with Giffgaff it’s not worth using iMessage. I think most UK mobile operators offer unlimited SMS and therefore most if not all UK iPhone users are better off switching off iMessage.
I haven’t experienced any issues, but I’m in the US and as far as I know, almost all carriers here have unlimited texting and calling, however, very few carriers offer unlimited data. Cricket wireless recently released and unlimited, no throttled, no caps, unlimited data for $70/mo.
I hate iMessage. I just want to send and receive texts? I have it turned off but the stupid system still allows people to send me iMessages which I then don’t actually receive.