Apple's App Stores, Some iCloud Services Experiencing Temporary Outage

[dwsolberg]

Presciently, I migrated a lot of my stuff to Google services this morning to give them a try. This makes me sad because I really like what Apple was, but I'm not sure if I like what's it's becoming.

In the last year, I've had reminders uncheck themselves automatically (still not fixed), contacts fail to sync (genius fixed by an hour-long process), and iMessages say they've sent but then an hour later say they didn't send (ironically, the message actually did send some of the time). Photos sometimes show up instantly in other places, sometimes it takes hours, sometimes it just doesn't sync. Frankly, I have very little confidence that any sort of syncing will work at a given time, and there's no obvious way to fix problems (reset button, resync button, etc).

 

[Paddle1]

This was happening to me earlier, I thought one of my apps was trying to make a purchase in the background.

 

[bigpoppamac31]

I know they're different companies but even Facebook is acting up. But I keep getting a notice on my Mac about having issue with iCloud Music Library.

 

[C DM]

Presciently, I migrated a lot of my stuff to Google services this morning to give them a try. This makes me sad because I really like what Apple was, but I'm not sure if I like what's it's becoming.

In the last year, I've had reminders uncheck themselves automatically (still not fixed), contacts fail to sync (genius fixed by an hour-long process), and iMessages say they've sent but then an hour later say they didn't send (ironically, the message actually did send some of the time). Photos sometimes show up instantly in other places, sometimes it takes hours, sometimes it just doesn't sync. Frankly, I have very little confidence that any sort of syncing will work at a given time, and there's no obvious way to fix problems (reset button, resync button, etc).

Not to worry, even Google and pretty much all kinds of other providers have outages and/or issues as well at times.

 

[liven2]

Not sure if this is related by Facebook messaging services are also not working.

 

[macduke]

Oh Apple.

Looking at that screenshot, it didn't even occur to me that Apple Pay could be tied into this whole mess and possibly go down. It looks fine now, but how many times have you swiped your Visa and it doesn't work because of a problem with Visa's system? I can't ever remember that happening. Just power outages causing outages, or the store's internet being down. And usually there's a backup to take card information up to a certain limit (at least there was when I worked as a cashier many years ago using carbon paper). Guess I'll always have to keep a card on me regardless of how widespread adoption becomes!

 

[ChazSch]

relax...go have a ☕️ and read something. It will be back soon... no sense getting your panties in a bunch.

 

[now i see it]

Apple's App Stores, Some iCloud Services Experiencing Temporary Outage

That's like reporting that the traffic light turned red. News?

 

[CaTOAGU]

Oh Apple.

Looking at that screenshot, it didn't even occur to me that Apple Pay could be tied into this whole mess and possibly go down. It looks fine now, but how many times have you swiped your Visa and it doesn't work because of a problem with Visa's system? I can't ever remember that happening. Just power outages causing outages, or the store's internet being down. And usually there's a backup to take card information up to a certain limit (at least there was when I worked as a cashier many years ago using carbon paper). Guess I'll always have to keep a card on me regardless of how widespread adoption becomes!

Card payment services go down quite often actually. I think it was lloyds bank in the uk had one recently.

 

[WordMasterRice]

Not to worry, even Google and pretty much all kinds of other providers have outages and/or issues as well at times.

You can't seriously be suggesting that Apple is on equal footing with Google services. The article you posted earlier in this thread even pointed out that it was an 18 minute outage. Things happen occasionally, but they happen much less frequently with out hosts, and when they do happen those host are MUCH faster to address the problem.

 

[PeterjMcM]

Apple's App Stores, Some iCloud Services Experiencing Temporary Outage

That's like reporting that the traffic light turned red. News?

Yeah but this one it's even a major outage.

 

[dk001]

They appear to be coming back up. There's less yellow squares on the server list now.

I'm still showing 13...

 

[ovo6]

iMessage will be down anytime now

 

[egraphixstudios]

Same here in the UK. stopped about 1.5 hours ago..

 

[Apple Corps]

Card payment services go down quite often actually. I think it was lloyds bank in the uk had one recently.

I disagree based on my experience. We are extensive users of cards and I can not recall an outage.

 

[CaTOAGU]

I disagree based on my experience. We are extensive users of cards and I can not recall an outage.

Might be different in the uk, a lot of our banks have quite old legacy systems.

 

[TMRJIJ]

If only my wife went down as often as iCloud does...

You should probably see a marriage counselor about that...

 

[pat500000]

Get it together Apple

They don't want to. They are too busy opening new stores and cater to Hindu and China.

 

[macduke]

Card payment services go down quite often actually. I think it was lloyds bank in the uk had one recently.

Ok. I've never experienced it. Maybe I'm lucky? I worked as a grocery store cashier for several years in high school, and as a teller at a few different banks while in college. IDK. Occasionally I'll end up with a magnetic card read error, but many places are moving to pin and chip so that happens less often.

 

[Pentium]

Yeah get this message every time I open coc.

EDIT: I am not actually trying to purchase anything though.

you spent a fortune on these walls

 

[dwsolberg]

Not to worry, even Google and pretty much all kinds of other providers have outages and/or issues as well at times.

Well, I'm testing out Google services to see if I have a better experience with them. Based on my other Google experiences, I expect that I will. It makes me sad that Apple can't compete at this level, but I don't buy Apple stuff because I'm loyal. I buy Apple stuff because it's better. If that changes, so will I.

 

[profmjh]

Can't access iTunes store at all on any device. Wanted to buy a movie. I guess I'll try Amazon.

 

[campyguy]

If only my wife went down as often as iCloud does...

Stop eating garlic and onions and she just might. I write this from experience - and a change in diet...

 

[vpndev]

And Apple is trying to do a partial pivot to a services model.

Step one, Tim, is to get services working at close to 99.9% reliability. Apple is nowhere near close. This is mandatory before you even START to think about pivot. Reliability has to be so high that no-one even thinks about it any more.

Apple Services has a long way to go.

And we will all note in a few days that there is no post-mortem, no discussion of what went wrong and the lessons learned, and the remedies applied. No. Just "trust us now because we're better". Sorry - that doesn't work any more.

 

[coolfactor]

I don't expect online services to be perfect, but this happens several times per year. When was the last time you've heard about Google having s system outage?

I suspect that it's an architectural design issue. Google likely has far more distributed systems, so outages likely do occur but have minimum impact because of the redundancy. Apple is building data centres in order to have the same level of resiliency for their cloud services, but it's going to take time to achieve that. That's my best guess.

I don't think people appreciate enough how complex these systems are... lots of "moving parts" to keep working and systems to keep updated. It's not like they build it and then walk away. It takes daily monitoring, maintenance and upkeep. And there's other factors,such as DDoS attacks. When's the last time (or first for that matter) of hearing about Apple's systems being under attack? These outages may be caused by such events. Other providers openly share when they are under attack, but Apple doesn't.