Update 2 9:45PM ET: Users this evening again reported issues centered around iCloud. The outage affected all store services, according to Apple’s status page. It appears to have been resolved, however, with the exception of Game Center.
Update: After about an hour of downtime and still with no admission from Apple of anything ever having gone wrong, iCloud services seem to be coming back online now.
Despite being listed as fully functional on Apple’s status page, it seems iCloud is once again down for many users. Reports across Twitter and in our own experience here at 9to5Mac have verified that iCloud and the App Store (and possibly other Apple services) are currently down.
Aside from bugging out on native devices like Macs and iPhones, the problem is popping up on the iCloud.com web interface (seen above) and even seems to be blocking users’ ability to open the iCloud panel in System Preferences, as doing so causes both the Preferences app and the iCloud Services process to stop responding.
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As mentioned above, the App Store also seems to be having some issues with installing and updating apps, which is probably related to this downtime. Downloads from the iTunes Store and iBooks also seem to be affected, though all of the stores still load just fine. Photo syncing across platforms is stalling out for some.
iMessage appears to be having problems for a number of users, though others are still able to use the messaging service without issue. Find My iPhone is inaccessible for the web and fails to login from the mobile app. iOS activations are also impacted, so iOS users trying to activate new or recently updated devices will be unable to do so.
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Not all iCloud services seem to be totally down, however. For example, the Notes and Contacts applications still syncs across devices. iCloud mail can’t receive incoming mail, but is able to send messages for some users. Podcast downloads, while technically part of iTunes, are up as well. Some reports of Find My Friends breaking are also rolling in, but in our testing that still seems to be running.
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Developers are also finding that the CloudKit Dashboard is unresponsive.
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iTunes is also down… and iMessage appears to be struggling
Yep – Down in Southern New Jersey! Those Bastards! ;)
Just spoke with an iCloud Support Specialist and she told me that even their internal software are down as well so she hopes for it to be a quick fix.
Yet the Apple Status Page reports no problem. BS!
And the Apple Support site just shows the Spinning Beach Ball of Death!
Nice job, Apple!
Maybe they can’t update their Apple Status Page because their system is down too. :) (ha…I really should backup my iCloud Drive to Dropbox.)
It just works! (TM)
It’s just not work
I just updated my phone to prep for my Apple Watch and now my phone won’t activate because it can’t reach the Activation Server. Brilliant.
This is why my phone activation shouldn’t be dependent on an Activation Server. Just let it talk to the carrier and activate that way. :/
Chilling with my iBrick now.
And how often are carrier network servers down? I remember when I had an Android phone I also had issues getting it up and running.
The amount of hyperbole and first-world-problems being spoken of here are mind boggling!
This has been my main gripe with Apple’s status dashboard is that it doesn’t appear to be automated but depends on them making some sort of an admission. I know I hate admitting to mistakes but if doing that required that I update a web page too I’d certainly do it less that I already like to do.
Just another me too post.
Sadly Apple has had a long history of cloud failures. They’re going to have to go a long way to convince people they can provide a professional cloud service at this point.
I’ve used iCloud since its inception on a daily basis. This is the first time I’ve experienced an outage. I’ll give them this one. This is nothing like MobileMe. They’ve come a long way.
I’m sorry, but how many EXTENDED failures has Microsoft Azure / Office 365 cloud services had? If you want to compare uptime statistics, iCloud is actually MUCH more reliable! This is typical FUD.
You do realize just how big MSFT is in the Cloud? Simple rule of life… the larger you are the more exposed you are. Don’t get me wrong, MSFT has its own issues but as an Apple user I try to be rational when comparing MSFT to Apple or Android to Apple etc… No need to blindly make a fool of yourself defending Apple.
The size makes no excuse… Bottom line, MSFT’s service is much less reliable, yet get almost no media attention… Apple, because they are so popular now, even when they have a small hiccup, makes headlines the world over.
I’m not making a fool of myself, you are by trying to bend the facts to suite your position. *shakes head*
How many have Google, Twitter, Facebook, Spotify, Amazon, Pandora cloud failures as compared to Apple?
Quit using low hanging fruit, Apple sucks at the cloud and have for a very long time.
So does Microsoft, with near daily issues with various Azure issues, yet receive a fraction of the media coverage Apple does. Talk about double standard! And Apple’s cloud services have become much more reliable in recent years.
I’ve had FAR LESS issues with Apple’s cloud services than those offered by others.
Edison has a point though. You really don’t hear much in the news about when MS services go down – unless it is Xbox Live.
On the other hand, whenever MS do something amazing – like Hololens – it barely gets a mention either, whereas every little thing Apple does is lavishly courted by the press.
Apple, in everyones perception are completely different to everyone else. All the things they do even slightly better are magnified to be super-important ™, and all the things they do slightly wrong are magnified to be super disastrous ™. It’s the nature of the beast.
Apple services went down for a little while – it’s not the end of the world and not worth fighting over either :)
You can shake your self-righteous head all day long as your brain is clearly blind to anything other than Apple’s self-proclaimed superiority. I have no issues with Apple but some of their “Followers” are dangerously close to being disciples and that scares me.
OK, now who’s doing the name calling? Pot, meet kettle. I’m done with you.
@Edison Again, I am not claiming other services don’t go down. It is always inevitable. But compare Google and Amazon’s down time versus Apple’s iCloud. It’s not even remotely close. Apple sucks at the cloud. Period. They are getting better, but don’t kid yourself thinking they are even remotely the “gold standard” or that Apple’s mantra of “It just works” is even close.
I never implied that Apple is the “gold standard”, nor do I kid myself about the “it just works” slogan… I would put it closer to “it just works, better” instead. Again, from personal usage experiences, iCloud, while not perfect, has been excellent for me in comparison to Microsoft Azure. Amazon and Dropbox are still tops in my book though.
@Edison Here’s a large scale study on comparison of downtime for last year. Apple didn’t do so well: http://iwgcr.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/downtime-statistics-current-1.3.pdf Again. Cloud services are where Apple is VERY weak in. They have been slowly (VERY slowly) improving, but they are not up to snuff at all.
@Edison Slightly more “updated” article (the pdf I posted above was up to March 2014, so not really current): http://www.networkworld.com/article/2866950/cloud-computing/which-cloud-providers-had-the-best-uptime-last-year.html
And that’s why we need the AI in the future – they would code and work out solutions that will never break down or crash. It doesn’t look like humans are really able to come up with bulletproof things. We make mistakes in the design and engineering and so on. The AI most likely wouldn’t. Soon everything will be connected to the web and is working through these kind of services.. and they cannot crash like this.
People are talking about the cashless society here in Europe. You know, that we’d ditch paper money altogether and only rely on online banking. But just recently we had an serious outtake where credit card payments weren’t functioning well for 2-3 days. Can you imagine a future where we are only paying through Apple Pay or PayPal or something like that, and then they crash? This simply cannot happen anymore.
I just made two purchases on the iTunes store about two hours ago that didn’t have any issues. Seems this is pretty recent.
Photos are glitchy as well. On my iPhone, some of the photos and videos won’t download.
Seems to be back, as far as Mail goes.
At 12:12 PM iCloud Notes is down for me. It says application can’t load. It’ been this way for a half hour at least, when I first tried to get Notes.
It’s back. Mail is coming in.
And, it appears it is back up again!
Can you imagine if this was happening at Microsoft! Apple is dealing with a lot of issues these days on both their OS platforms and even the hardware side is less than stellar. They once enjoyed the benefits of being irrelevant but now they are very much relevant and therefore I suggest that we should all be more guarded as we are all targets for an increase in malicious code and possible victims of quality control issues at Apple.
Apple servers are going down almost every other week. This cannot be good.
Sad but true for every company that grows at the pace that Apple has since 2007.
“Apple servers are going down almost every other week. This cannot be good.” Really? Every other week? Talk about spewing hyperbole!!!
Listen Fan Boy do your research. Apple is not immune to the reality of hosting services and yes they experience a lot of issues almost every other week. Not all being as significant as others but they have a lot of issues. Guys like you and name calling the likes of this is what gives Apple users a bad wrap. I use all sorts of Apple products and have for 25+ years and I can safely say that they need to tidy things up a bit.
Apple has already confirmed that their next OS for both platforms will be focused on stabilization, hardware efficiencies and overall performance enhancements.
Name calling? I guess your command of English is somewhat weak… I stated your comment was full of hyperbole, that is not name calling. You, on the other hand, just called me a “Fan Boy”, THAT is name calling!
BTW, I use Microsoft Azure, and it shows almost DAILY issues with SharePoint, and often on OneDrive, so please cut the crap. Azure / 365 has many more issues with uptime than iCloud, Dropbox, Box, Amazon!
Sounds like your problems stems from your access point as you can view daily MSFT logs for all of their Cloud based offerings and which clearly do not support your claims. You really need to tone it down a few notches. Love life, love Apple but no need to hate anything in life to the extent that you do MSFT.
lets not forget the fact that iCloud runs on Azure and Amazon
Yes, I can very much imagine this happening at Microsoft. It happens a lot (Onedrive to name one).
Too easy for you to post something like this. Please do share your evidence as I use One Drive everyday and cannot remember the last time there was any sort of measurable downtime. One Drive runs beautifully on my Macs, iPads and iPhone.
Just as easy as for you to say it works fine. I have issues retrieving docs from one mac to another at least once or twice a week, much more than with iCloud. There, you have my personal experience. You’re asking for evidence … Go to a court or perhaps consult a dictionary.
If Apple was wanting to shift services like Notes over to their services and off IMAP, would it involve an outage, and could you tell it’s moved over?
You might want to update this article again; Apple System Status page now updated to reflect outage information.
The password I updated in my MacBook Safari is still not synced to my iPhone safari.
So this panic attack turned out to be much ado about nothing. Typical sensationalism from 9to5
Update: Apple retroactively updated their service page after service was restored.
Update 2: iTunes is down again and the service page says that only the Game Center is down.
Update 3: Apple finally updated the service status page that the store may be down for some users just as it starts working for me again. I’m sensing a pattern here.