Apple working to resolve widespread iCloud and retail store failures [u]
An unknown problem is causing difficulties with very many of Apple's iCloud services and is also affecting retail stores which are reportedly unable to complete sales. Update: Apple has now restored many of the 21 services.
Apple's iCloud Status page at time of writing
Following intermittent email problems earlier today, very many of Apple's iCloud services are officially listed as being down or "experiencing a problem," according to Apple's system status pages
The problem appeared to be quickly worsening, too, as more services were being affected. That appears to have stemmed and Apple has been reporting mostly steadily improved services all round. After approximately 90 minutes, an Apple Pay issue regarding the ability to use or suspend cards was the first to be fixed.
Game Center and iCloud Mail problems were next to be fixed. Apple's automated system status has been reporting fluctuating numbers of resolved issues, but currently it claims 18 out of the 21 issues had been fixed.
The remaining services still having difficulties include iCloud Reminders and iCloud Calendar.
Apple has yet to comment but customers on Twitter were reporting similar failures in Apple Stores. Reportedly some number of transactions are failing to complete, presumably because of the same issue.
This incident appears to have been more widespread than previous iCloud problems, but the service has been affected before, as recently as June where two separate incidents cause issues with the iTunes Store and basic iCloud functions.
Update: 2:33 p.m. EDT Apple resolved the Apple Pay issue.
Update: 2:47 p.m. EDT Apple fixes iCloud Mail and Game Center problems.
Update: 3:00 p.m. EDT Apple claims 18 services restored.
Update: 5:32 p.m. EDT All issues have been resolved.
Apple's iCloud Status page at time of writing
Following intermittent email problems earlier today, very many of Apple's iCloud services are officially listed as being down or "experiencing a problem," according to Apple's system status pages
The problem appeared to be quickly worsening, too, as more services were being affected. That appears to have stemmed and Apple has been reporting mostly steadily improved services all round. After approximately 90 minutes, an Apple Pay issue regarding the ability to use or suspend cards was the first to be fixed.
Game Center and iCloud Mail problems were next to be fixed. Apple's automated system status has been reporting fluctuating numbers of resolved issues, but currently it claims 18 out of the 21 issues had been fixed.
The remaining services still having difficulties include iCloud Reminders and iCloud Calendar.
iCloud is down in case you haven't lost your mind trying to enter your password already
-- meaningful internet moniker (@loudersoft)
Apple has yet to comment but customers on Twitter were reporting similar failures in Apple Stores. Reportedly some number of transactions are failing to complete, presumably because of the same issue.
This incident appears to have been more widespread than previous iCloud problems, but the service has been affected before, as recently as June where two separate incidents cause issues with the iTunes Store and basic iCloud functions.
Update: 2:33 p.m. EDT Apple resolved the Apple Pay issue.
Update: 2:47 p.m. EDT Apple fixes iCloud Mail and Game Center problems.
Update: 3:00 p.m. EDT Apple claims 18 services restored.
Update: 5:32 p.m. EDT All issues have been resolved.
Comments
Someone must have unplugged a power strip to plug in their desk fan...
Or the bogeyman...
https://www.zdnet.com/article/seriously-cisco-put-huawei-x-509-certificates-and-keys-into-its-own-switches/
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/07/facebook-cloudflare-microsoft-and-twitter-suffer-outages/
😟
The reason I ask is to follow on with was there an outage of other AWS hosted stuff?
The users metadata info and encryption keys are stored on Apple owned servers (there is at least one country exception, perhaps two or soon to be). The encrypted files themselves are stored with third-party cloud companies with both Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services specifically acknowledged by them. At one time Apple had mentioned Azure (Microsoft) as well. The wording of the cloud security document where the first two companies were mentioned isn’t entirely clear so Apple could certainly be using other cloud storage services even if not naming them directly.
Earlier this year there was an article here on AI claiming Apple had halved their reliance on Amazon over the past year or so. But just a few days earlier another publication ran a detailed article on how reliant Apple was on AWS and it was increasingly so. To be honest I would not be surprised to learn they are more reliant than ever on 3rd party servers considering Apple's rapid expanse into services and the expanded need for cloud streaming of news, music, media, and other service content and recent cancellations and delays on building their own data centers. The AI article was likely in relationship to potentially personally identifiable data, iCloud stuff, where Apple is the presumed caretaker and coordinator and moving more of it off AWS and over to Google instead and not overall cloud needs but who knows exactly where the truth lies outside of the parties themselves.
The only thing clear is that Apple does not have nearly enough server farms of their own to host all of your personal content plus what's needed for various Apple services so yes they depend on outside companies in coordination with data stored on their Apple-owned servers. Someday they may have enough capacity of their own, not today.