iMessage & FaceTime outage hits Apple devices for second time in a week [update: fixed]

Posted:
in iCloud edited January 2014
Apple's iMessage and FaceTime services saw their second outage this week on Friday, as both services were unavailable to "some users," the company disclosed.

Outage


The online services provided by Apple can be tracked through the company's System Status page, which provides real-time updates on its stores, iCloud, and other features such as iMessage. As of Friday morning, iMessage and FaceTime were experiencing issues for over an hour.

The downtime for some users marks the second time this week that Apple's services have seen issues. Downtime reached more than five hours when both FaceTime and iMessage became unavailable on Tuesday.

As with the outage earlier this week, other services appear to be unaffected, as features like Photo Stream and digital stores like the App Store remain available.

Apple has seen a number of sporadic iCloud service outages in recent weeks. The issues are typically resolved within one to two hours.

Update: Apple fixed the issue as of 6:07 p.m. Pacific. The outage lasted for a little over one hour.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 51
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member


    Apple Is Doo?•ª£ªÓ??©{{503 Service Temporarily Unavailable}}

  • Reply 2 of 51
    philboogiephilboogie Posts: 7,675member
    What are the chances of them taking down that Status Page? Even though one cannot go back to far in time, to get an overview of their [I]uptime[/I], but still.
  • Reply 3 of 51
    nasseraenasserae Posts: 3,167member
    I tried to send an iMessage from my iPhone and it got stuck at "Sending". I checked the Service Status website and no issues! Tried again 5 minutes later and it worked. That was like 45 minutes ago. Do you guys have these articles typed and ready to go just in case?!
  • Reply 4 of 51


    Fire Tim Cook! This would have never happened if he hadn't been running Apple so poorly these last few years!


     


    /s

  • Reply 5 of 51
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member


    Once they get a few more data centers online and properly redundant and load balanced, this type of outage will become a lot less likely. They are way behind in datacenter buildout compared to the rapid increase in their user base.

  • Reply 6 of 51
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    Are they ruling out DOS attacks? Network Solutions was down most of yesterday and I assume that was as DOS attack. I had over a dozen web sites that were either showing as off line or took several minutes to load a single page.
  • Reply 7 of 51
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member


    Originally Posted by PhilBoogie View Post

    What are the chances of them taking down that Status Page? Even though one cannot go back to far in time, to get an overview of their uptime, but still.


     


    Zero. Why would they? It's a nice tool. They're accountable where others may not be.

  • Reply 8 of 51


    On Tuesday my wife was out of town. I texted her four times. Each one went via regular text, instead of via Messages format, but they got there.

  • Reply 9 of 51


    My 2¢'s worth: Much of the time today, Messages "hangs" trying to send a text message. If you tap-and-hold on the message balloon, a pop-up option "Send as a text message" appears. When I tap that, the message is sent immediately (text message charges apply, of course). This too shall pass...

  • Reply 10 of 51


    All green again.  Crisis adverted.

  • Reply 11 of 51
    When did the expectation become 100% up time?
  • Reply 12 of 51
    apple ][apple ][ Posts: 9,233member


    Outages will happen from time to time, no matter how many data centers they build, IMO.


     


    I don't really care about an iMessage or Facetime outage. The kind of outage that pisses me off is if the cable connection goes out and you're in the middle of doing something involving real money, such as playing a real money poker game, and actual dollars are on the line.

  • Reply 13 of 51
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    It appears that FaceTime and iMessage are connected on the back end more than the others or it's really huge coincidence they seem to go down in tandem.

    rob bonner wrote: »
    When did the expectation become 100% up time?

    It depends on the service. WIth a redundant internet service 99% or higher is expected, even if it is free.
  • Reply 14 of 51
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


     


    Zero. Why would they? It's a nice tool. They're accountable where others may not be.



    FWIW Amazom's cloud status can be found here:


    http://status.aws.amazon.com/


     


    Windows Azure is here:


    http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/support/service-dashboard/


     


    Anyone wanting to check Google's Cloud status would use this page:


    http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=status&ts=1365785787530


     


    Noted that Google is very transparent about downtime, allowing you to search a couple months back for service interruptions "where others may not be" so forthcoming. 

  • Reply 15 of 51

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post



    It appears that FaceTime and iMessage are connected on the back end more than the others or it's really huge coincidence they seem to go down in tandem.

    It depends on the service. WIth a redundant internet service 99% or higher is expected, even if it is free.


    99% uptime means you can have about ~87.5 hours of downtime in a year.  I'm confident there well under that.

  • Reply 16 of 51
    My feeling is that Apple is slowly but surely dying. Nothing really interesting is happening anymore.
  • Reply 17 of 51
    philboogiephilboogie Posts: 7,675member
    fabulous wrote: »
    My feeling is that Apple is slowly but surely dying. Nothing really interesting is happening anymore.

    I feel for you
  • Reply 18 of 51
    OK I know this post will be deleted very quickly. But why does Apple full of Samsung parts claims to be the best when I read a thread like this that hits every device?
  • Reply 19 of 51
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member


    Originally Posted by SCProfessor View Post

    But why does Apple full of Samsung parts claims to be the best when I read a thread like this that hits every device?


     


    Are you dumb enough to actually expect an answer to that question? That's not even a question. You're using multiple completely incorrect premises to make assumptions tied to both them and reality in no way whatsoever.


     


    Here's your answer: They use an argon laser to cut a model train from a single piece of pineapple and ship it across the world to street vendors for resale.

  • Reply 20 of 51
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    OK I know this post will be deleted very quickly. But why does Apple full of Samsung parts claims to be the best when I read a thread like this that hits every device?

    "Apple full of Samsung part'? Do you want to take another swing at the question?
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