Apple's iTunes Store hit with hours-long outage affecting music, app and e-book downloads [u]
Apple late Tuesday confirmed an unknown issue affecting its digital storefronts has barred users from purchasing, downloading or re-downloading content from the iTunes Music Store, App Store and iBookstore.
While the extent of Apple's apparent iTunes outage has yet to be reported, the company informed customers of the ongoing problem through its system status webpage, saying affected users "may be unable to access multiple stores or make purchases" as a result of the issue. The company retroactively updated the status page's Detailed Timeline to reflect more than five hours of downtime.
Users affected by the outage took to Twitter earlier today, saying purchase and download attempts returned the error message, "This item is temporarily unavailable." Some customers saw trouble re-downloading already purchased items through the iOS App Store, while others noted similar problems on the Mac App Store.
It appears only select distribution servers are affected at this time, however, as certain regions saw no interruption in iTunes Store service. In addition, some users have reported the issue resolved.
At the time of this writing, the outage has been ongoing for nearly six hours, according to Apple's status page.
Update: Shortly after acknowledging the iTunes Store outage, Apple reported the problem as fixed with a total downtime of over five and a half hours.
While the extent of Apple's apparent iTunes outage has yet to be reported, the company informed customers of the ongoing problem through its system status webpage, saying affected users "may be unable to access multiple stores or make purchases" as a result of the issue. The company retroactively updated the status page's Detailed Timeline to reflect more than five hours of downtime.
Users affected by the outage took to Twitter earlier today, saying purchase and download attempts returned the error message, "This item is temporarily unavailable." Some customers saw trouble re-downloading already purchased items through the iOS App Store, while others noted similar problems on the Mac App Store.
It appears only select distribution servers are affected at this time, however, as certain regions saw no interruption in iTunes Store service. In addition, some users have reported the issue resolved.
At the time of this writing, the outage has been ongoing for nearly six hours, according to Apple's status page.
Update: Shortly after acknowledging the iTunes Store outage, Apple reported the problem as fixed with a total downtime of over five and a half hours.
Comments
Wasn't just limited to iTunes. Mail was also down for hours today and I had to re-enter my password multiple times. It's back ok for me now.
OK
"You're fired."
No evidence for that, just coincidence.
Once is an accident. Twice is coincidence. Three times is an enemy action.
I'm not; the iTunes Store has only been down once before IIRC. The Music, Apps & iBooks that is. Early 2013, think March/April. It's their Cloud offerings that suffer the occasional outage, like Mail and such.
I'd say unlucky. Because I think this would've happened many times in the past if it was 'hacked', and that doesn't seem to be the case.
This may have cost apple 3 of my hard earned bucks.
I couldn't buy it on iBooks so I went to Amazon. It was the cheaper there anyway.
I'm now wondering if the fix will improve the very slow App Store on my iPhone4 iOS7.
My App Store has been gradually slowing for several months, now is too painful to use.
I actually never use the App Store on my iPhone or iPad: I buy everything on my Mac as I read reviews on other websites concurrently.
That bears repeating...!
Absence of evidence is not evidence of coincidence ¡
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/eve-supposed-tim-cooks-greatest-100533003.html
I suspect it's due to some backend update. Can't wait for sept 9
This ^^
I worked in an AT&T central office for over twenty years. Human beings make mistakes. Even with a ten step safety process for performing updates (Do I know why this work is being done? Do I have the knowledge? Do I have the tools? Have I notified other departments? And so forth...) things go wrong. With the high capacity transmission systems in use today pulling the wrong fiber connection can take down an entire region. Even redundant systems can be taken down by pushing the wrong button on a control panel or pulling out the wrong circuit pack.
And yes, in those twenty years I caused my share of outages. One was even FCC reportable and I had a letter in my personnel file for a couple of years.