iCloud email sees worldwide disruption of service
Apple iCloud users from New York to London are seeing selective outages of service that leave them without access to their iCloud mail accounts, a problem that has persisted for over a day.
An Apple Support Community page was on Apr. 17 discussing the disruption of service and now has over 100 replies from affected users in the North America, Europe and as far as New Caledonia.
According to forum members who spoke with Apple support representatives, the outage is sporadic and does not affect a large number of iCloud users, however it seems that the problem is not confined to a specific area. The company's iCloud status page reports that less than one percent of all users are seeing problems with the mail service, and a fix is expected "ASAP."
"What is even more concerning is that after a 50 minute phone call, not one person (tech support, senior advisor, program leader, nor engineering department) had known that this was a pervasive issue. Not one," writes Apple Support forum member 'stadrummer.' "My account has been passed to the engineering department and I should hear back by tomorrow."
It was reported in January that over 85 million users had signed up for iCloud since its debut in October 2011, a rate that outpaced device sales at the time.
Affected users have no access to their iCloud mail accounts, whether it be from the web client to their iPhones, which points to a problem with a specific backend issue most likely originating from the company's separate mail servers. Apple's status page claims that only mail is affected while all other iCloud assets remain fully functional.
In December 2011, its was reported that U.S. .mac and .me users were experiencing problems with mail coming from Roadrunner and Comcast domains, though outgoing messages were left unaffected. The cause was ultimately found to be an accidental engagement of Apple's spam filters.
The source of the most recent issue is as yet unknown, and Apple hasn't released any information regarding the matter.
[ View article on AppleInsider ]
Comments
Apple iCloud users from New York to London are seeing selective outages of service that leave them without access their iCloud mail accounts, a problem that has persisted for over a day ...
Not to be rude, but this happens quite a lot in places that aren't New York and London. it happened where I live just last month. Everything gone for most of the day.
I would suggest this is only a "story" because it's happening to someone famous or someone who has a blog (in London or New York).
Maybe they're running low on coal.
Greenpeace chaps have the death grip on the antennae on the roof.
BTW it is working fine here for us in West Florida so far.
Working for me over here, Bear. Of course, I'm not on the East Coast and in Europe.
Being on the East Coast AND in Europe could be quite painful.
I've just had to manually check for messages today. Since I'm not in Germany, it should be pushing.
Same problems here. Hope it will be fixed soon.
My theory is that most iPad 3 buyers are opting in to the free 5GB iCloud account, and the mail servers are being overwhelmed. I think they should use Apple PNS to notify devices of new emails, and only then turn IMAP on long enough to fetch the new message, then turn it off again. It would shift load from the IMAP servers to the PNS servers, which have proven far more scalable. Non-Apple clients can off course just keep using pure IMAP.
Apple iCloud users from New York to London are seeing selective outages of service that leave them without access to their iCloud mail accounts, a problem that has persisted for over a day.
Does Apple use Mac Minis as their servers?
Ah, "less than 1%". That sure makes it newsworthy. Guess those one percent are the ones with jobs that let them post news articles.
So worldwide except where I live, apparently.
Ah, "less than 1%". That sure makes it newsworthy. Guess those one percent are the ones with jobs that let them post news articles.
Guess we're part of the 99%
I often I get error messages when I check email on my iPhone....
Don't check email that way !
Does Apple use Mac Minis as their servers?
No, if I recall correctly Apple uses Oracle on Sun Solaris iron for the MobileMe/iCloud e-mail services.
Amusingly, e-mail and notes are the two iCloud services that I don't use.
Gmail was flaky for a good part of the day yesterday. My private email service was down on and off for a day a couple of weeks ago. It's certainly frustrating, but it happens. Having more than one email address/provider these days is a must.
Yup, even Gmail goes out. However, that doesn't help when someone sends to the address that's out of service.
I'm using an e-mail forwarding service (which forwards to two different e-mail providers), but if the forwarding service goes out, again that's a vulnerability for incoming mail.
The lesson to be learned here is that no e-mail is 100% reliable.