Apple's iCloud experiences hours-long global outage and service slowdowns [u]

AppleInsiderAppleInsider
Posted:
in iCloud edited May 2015
Apple's iCloud took a hit late Wednesday night as users from around the world experienced trouble with multiple services due to an unknown issue, ultimately resolved some seven hours later.




AppleInsider readers from around the world reported iCloud service slowdowns and complete outages early this morning. Apple's System Status webpage initially indicated problems starting around 12:30 a.m. Eastern, but the latest status update puts the beginning at 2:30 a.m., with fixes taking effect around 9:30. About 40 percent of iCloud users were impacted.

Affected services included:
  • iCloud Backup
  • iCloud Drive
  • iWork for iCloud beta
  • Back to My Mac
  • iCloud Keychain
  • iCloud Mail
  • Documents in the Cloud
  • Photos
  • Find My iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Mac
  • iMovie Theater
  • iCloud Account & Sign In
Apple has long suffered setbacks with its in-house internet products, including a spate of service blackouts in 2013 and a major outage in September.

The cause of today's breakdown has yet to be verified.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 17
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,727member
    Just checked here in central, west Florida and all is working for me.
  • Reply 2 of 17
    esaruohoesaruoho Posts: 61member

    anyone know how to export _all_ Notes / Reminders to safekeeping before they're lost?

  • Reply 3 of 17
    cpsrocpsro Posts: 3,198member

    Apple getting ready for WWDC!

  • Reply 4 of 17
    bobbyfozzbobbyfozz Posts: 97member

    This can be very disruptive for business. I don't use anybody's Cloud. I prefer my own backup systems. I like to HAVE the software. And yes, it seems that as good as Apple is, this is an ongoing pain-in-the-neck they should be working harder on solving.

  • Reply 5 of 17
    rob53rob53 Posts: 3,251member

    Everything showing green as of 30 minutes ago. I'll wait to hear from Apple what went wrong. I wasn't having any apparent problems over night or this morning.

  • Reply 6 of 17
    adamwadamw Posts: 114guest
    Apple needs to sure up their reliability and the monitoring of their Cloud services.
  • Reply 7 of 17
    rmb0037rmb0037 Posts: 142member
    Probably DNS issues again. Those issues are incredibly difficult to troubleshoot.
  • Reply 8 of 17
    brlawyerbrlawyer Posts: 828member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by adamw View Post



    Apple needs to sure up their reliability and the monitoring of their Cloud services.



    Mr Cook is more concerned about the AWatch and deep social activism - no surprises here.

  • Reply 9 of 17
    ddawson100ddawson100 Posts: 513member

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by esaruoho View Post

     

    anyone know how to export _all_ Notes / Reminders to safekeeping before they're lost?



     

    Not sure what resources you're working with but if you're on Windows with MS Office you could add the account in Outlook and export from there. Can't answer for other platform combos.

  • Reply 10 of 17
    teaearlegreyhotteaearlegreyhot Posts: 1,002member

    I-cloud services will be slowed and disrupted every time a real cloud passes across Apple's solar-powered data center.  ;)

  • Reply 11 of 17
    haggarhaggar Posts: 1,568member



    Are these hardware or software issues?

  • Reply 12 of 17
    planetary paulplanetary paul Posts: 144member
    Still much slower than it is even normally here in NL/EU. And some things don't sync at all at the moment. Probably will take time to recover.
  • Reply 13 of 17
    dick applebaumdick applebaum Posts: 12,527member
    brlawyer wrote: »
    adamw wrote: »
    Apple needs to sure up their reliability and the monitoring of their Cloud services.


    Mr Cook is more concerned about the AWatch and deep social activism - no surprises here.

    Yes, he is so disinterested that he reportedly paid [estimated $ Billions] to acquire FoundationDB to address this very problem ...

    http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/185397/apple-buys-flexible-fast-database-software-firm-foundationdb-with-eye-on-the-cloud

    Unlike some here, Tim and many people can fart and chew gum at the same time!
  • Reply 14 of 17
    nairbnairb Posts: 253member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum View Post





    Unlike some here, Tim and many people can fart and chew gum at the same time!

     

    Whenever I try that I end up accidentally spitting my gum out.

  • Reply 15 of 17
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,727member
    nairb wrote: »
    Whenever I try that I end up accidentally spitting my gum out.

    Better than the alternative ... :D
  • Reply 16 of 17
    bloodshotrollin'redbloodshotrollin'red Posts: 442member
    My business slowed to a crawl when we lost iCloud, Thursday.
    One of the most expensive cloud service storage and applications platforms offered and it's nothing more than a shoddy erection.
  • Reply 17 of 17
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,322moderator
    bloodshotrollin'red wrote: »
    My business slowed to a crawl when we lost iCloud, Thursday.
    One of the most expensive cloud service storage and applications platforms offered and it's nothing more than a shoddy erection.

    They tried to buy DropBox in 2009 for a 9 figure sum (hundreds of millions):

    http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/18/dropbox-said-no-to-nine-digits-acquisition-offer-from-apple-steve-jobs/

    Then they decided to do it themselves with iCloud:

    http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-once-vowed-to-kill-dropbox-now-its-worth-2013-11

    DropBox is now valued somewhere over $10b but isn't a public company. One of their rivals Box is valued at $2b. Box has 32m users, DropBox has 300m. iCloud will have a similar amount of users as DropBox. DropBox could go public this year:

    http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/02/11/dropboxs-new-cfo-signals-ipo-aspirations/

    It's unusual that Apple's service has global outages, it doesn't sound like a capacity problem although they are building more data centres:

    http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2015/02/23Apple-to-Invest-1-7-Billion-in-New-European-Data-Centres.html

    They got rid of some of the employees involved with MobileMe but the mentions of people being fired just indicate a few people were let go, yet they had hundreds of engineers:

    https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/you-are-not-steve-jobs-9ae1727d2479

    It's not necessarily a people problem they have with iCloud but these global outages shouldn't be happening. If they decided to do a search engine of some sort, going down globally for hours wouldn't keep people using it for long.
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