iCloud Mail Outage Enters Second Day for Some Users

How many customers is "1.1.%", approx?

I've been down about 30 hours now. This is my main email account that I use in my business. This is a huge misstep for Apple, even though it's only wreaking havoc for a small fraction of their many millions of customers. And the fact that there is no statement from Apple on this amounts to the exact opposite of the "legendary customer service" that they are know for and pride themselves on. What the hell is going on?

I have always been a supporter of Apple's services, but this downtime is starting to become unreasonable. I have not gotten an email since Monday night...

It's bitten me too. 2 days without email is inexcusable. Apple wants to be a major player in online services, but time and time again they keep proving their tools are not up to the task (I'm also a former Mobile Me and .Mac user who experienced unreliable email there too, and let's not even get into the disaster that was iDisk...). I've also found iCloud syncing to be a bit flakey at times, usually it works but sometimes things like Reminders and Calendar events sync slowly or not at all.

aurichie said:

Well said.

People need to stop crying like little kids and support Apple. They are doing their best to resolve this problem as quickly as possible. As I wrote last night, this only affects a tiny proportion of the iCloud universe so Apple has done a good job limiting problems to a tiny minority. In the past, an outage like this would have affected everyone. Progress.

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Since it's only a tiny minority, why even fix it?

Another unhappy member of the 1%.

Apple has treated us rather shabbily. No ETA, no explanation, no notification via iMessage. An Apple spokesman just referred people to the status page and declined further comment. The status page just says that mail is out for 1.1% of their users and the next update will be in (last update + 3 hours). Actually, they're a little overdue right now.

You know you're in the middle of an iCloud when everything is foggy and indistinct and you're feeling all wet.

aurichie said:

Well said.

People need to stop crying like little kids and support Apple. They are doing their best to resolve this problem as quickly as possible. As I wrote last night, this only affects a tiny proportion of the iCloud universe so Apple has done a good job limiting problems to a tiny minority. In the past, an outage like this would have affected everyone. Progress.

Click to expand...

LOL at "progress". If we're counting, our single Exchange server hosting 35 mailboxes here at the office has had better uptime in 2012

"Doing your best to resolve" is not much consolation to people have been without email for 48 hours. Gmail/Google Apps has had email down pat since 2006, I'm not sure why Apple gets a free pass here for trying hard.

Glad to hear others had submitted it; thanks for the report.

Entering the 2nd day for me as well. I have a hard time believing I'm a part of the measly 1.1%. Just my luck, though. I also have a harder time believing that all the reports on here are all from the same 1.1%.

Seems like a very, very low estimate to avoid a negative media uprising right before an event, but what do I know? My outages always seem to have me and the masses of others in that meager 1%...

Been just told on tel support that service expected to be restored in 2 hours time. At 10 Pacific.

SO, maybe Cook will do a one more thing, and switch the server back on.

Or the whole issue is connected to upgrading iCloud for new services, and we have been crapped on.

I too am a part of that unlucky 1.1%. No emails (sent/received) since yesterday.

Part of the 1%? Or part of a larger percentage that isn't being reported!
What percentage of that 1% actually reads MR, and then of that percentage, actually posts in a thread regarding the outage?

Shenanigans I say.

Must be in the 1%. Rather irritating. Those daily deal emails I keep meaning to unsubscribe from won't read themselves you know.

Business users - use this time to catch up with yourselves. It's not often you get to have an enforced *stop* on your inbox.

Not cool

2 days without email, and untold wasted time calling customers, hotel, airline to re-route communications. I've defended Apple one too many times, it feels like, but not this time. I've never come across an email outage this bad, even in the 1990s. They obviously have no back-up plan, which means this could happen again.

Email today is just as important as a working phone line, which is to say: you won't die without either, but you can't do your job properly without both. Nobody expects 100% uptime, but 2-3 days down just doesn't cut it.

It's not like I plan on doing something stupid like running out to buy a Windows PC, but this is definitely the end of the road for iCloud and me. Google is looking good, or maybe it's time to use that old Mac Mini and set up my own server.

patrickwal said:

I've been down about 30 hours now. This is my main email account that I use in my business. This is a huge misstep for Apple, even though it's only wreaking havoc for a small fraction of their many millions of customers. And the fact that there is no statement from Apple on this amounts to the exact opposite of the "legendary customer service" that they are know for and pride themselves on. What the hell is going on?

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1.1% is approx. 1.5 million customers.

I'm out too

I don't know if it helps to mention that I too, have had no service in about 24+ hours. I wanna be very mad at apple but gmail has had outages (work email for me), my employer uses godaddy and was out a couple days ago. I am mad but it is for their secrecy over the matter, those 3-5 hour updates are totally lame. They need to own their F-ups.

I'm still down from yesterday too.

I say they give us 1%ers a free iPhone 5 in compensation.

craigab1 said:

This is outrageous. I've been without access to my email for more than 20 hours now. Apple support can't give me any answers and all we get is the same recycled update on the system status page. My business—my livelihood—is tied to my access.

I am the biggest Apple fan you'll meet and have been since buying my first Mac SE in 1987. But the way Apple is responding to this has even me wondering if I need to move my email to a more stable server.

I would hate to believe that their focus on today's iPhone 5 launch is getting in the way of fixing this problem.

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There aren't better than this. That is the problem. They have never been any good at web based services. As long as I can remember any online process Apple has offered has been a complete shambles.

Way back to the iTools days. When Steve stood on stage to claim it would always be free? Then decided to charge people for it.

Wow, I'm a 1-percenter too, who knew?

Seriously, my personal .me account has been out for 30+ hours, on the heels of having my business accounts out for many hours on Monday due to GoDaddy (and our site and store was down for awhile as well). Maybe time to get a gmail account as well...

B

maybe converting me.com eamail to icoud.com?

i wonder if the old mobile me accounts are being converted to icloud.com accounts.. i remember reading something about that...

Neefafeefa said:

i wonder if the old mobile me accounts are being converted to icloud.com accounts.. i remember reading something about that...

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They would have announced that ahead of time. Its completely random as 4 out of 5 of my old "family pack" accounts are fine.

Maybe they are using GoDaddy DNS.

#inverseOccupy ?

I don't know if I'm affected...I don't normally get many emails...

Comeagain? said:

I don't know if I'm affected...I don't normally get many emails...

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Just login to icloud via a web browser and try to read your emails. If you get an error, you are affected.

Geez, am I part of that miserable 1%? What good luck I have!

appleish said:

I too am a part of that unlucky 1.1%. No emails (sent/received) since yesterday.

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Me too