Photos, iCloud Drive, iMessage, other online Apple services hit by slowdowns & outages [u]

Posted:
in iCloud edited August 2015
A series of Apple's online services suffered slowdowns on Wednesday, and may be completely inaccessible to some users, according to Apple's official system status page. [Updated]




These predominantly include file storage services such as Photos, Mail Drop, iCloud Drive, iCloud Backup, and Documents in the Cloud, the tracking page indicates. Also experiencing problems however are the iWork for iCloud beta, and iMessage, Apple's messaging system for both iOS and OS X devices.

Problems began at approximately 11:30 a.m. Eastern time and are still ongoing, the company said.

Customers have complained about repeated outages of Apple's online services, particularly since iCloud launched in October 2011. One incident in May took some seven hours to resolve.

In March, the iTunes Store and the App Store were brought down for over seven hours by an internal DNS error. In a rare move, the company issued an apology through CNBC.

Update: Services have returned to normal as of about 4 p.m. Eastern.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 42
    SpamSandwichSpamSandwich Posts: 33,407member

    Did Google do it?  /s

  • Reply 2 of 42
    curtis hannahcurtis hannah Posts: 1,833member
    Worst timing for Me, trying to update from iOS 8.1.2 to 8.4 and this is the only day I can do it.
  • Reply 3 of 42
    hillstoneshillstones Posts: 1,490member
    That is why local storage will always beat cloud storage any day. Most do not want to rely on internet access or functioning cloud servers to access their data.
  • Reply 4 of 42
    sdw2001sdw2001 Posts: 18,015member
    Took me about ten tries to sign in to iTunes for the first time on updated Mac. That was an hour ago. It just didn't let me in...no password error.
  • Reply 5 of 42
    Does this affect Apple Music too?
  • Reply 7 of 42
    mac_128mac_128 Posts: 3,454member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by hillstones View Post



    That is why local storage will always beat cloud storage any day. Most do not want to rely on internet access or functioning cloud servers to access their data.



    Well, it doesn't exactly "beat" cloud storage. I don't really see it as a competition. I see it as an important compliment. The people who keep insisting I rely on a wireless world exclusively, for which the new rMB is seemingly targeted, conveniently skip over these kinds of problems, which will likely never go away. Local storage for backup of important files, is just as important as having wireless access anywhere. When the network goes down, people can still get their work done. And when you're caught out of the office, the cloud allows people to still get their work done (assuming the internet hasn't gone down LOL)

  • Reply 8 of 42
    jccjcc Posts: 326member
    Cook and the senior management should focus instead of spending their time of frivolous thing like giving interviews or voicing their political views. They're not there for that.
  • Reply 9 of 42
    mackymotomackymoto Posts: 34member

    Exactly Hillstones, I agree completely. Service has been down for nearly 4 hours as of now. Can't send email, can't use iMessage, kind of a problem.

  • Reply 10 of 42
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member

    People say that Apple is worse than other cloud providers but all the major providers have about the same availability statistics. We just tend to hear more about Apple's downtime around here. Google consistently ranks a little higher but Amazon and Microsoft usually a bit worse, but not huge differences.

     

    There are a number of different categories to consider such as Compute, Storage, DNS, CDN, and PaaS. Each type of platform affects different services. Because Apple's services are much more integrated across the different categories, an outage in one area can easily affect another area, especially since every service is Apple ID related. In the case of Amazon EC2 the nodes are fairly isolated yet they still have a worse record among the big cloud providers.

  • Reply 11 of 42
    bad weather is causing a lot of issues on the east coast. North Carolina has been hit hard by storms and many of our services are being affected. Apple has a NC presence and probably experienced outages related to that.
  • Reply 12 of 42
    crossladcrosslad Posts: 527member
    mackymoto wrote: »
    Exactly Hillstones, I agree completely. Service has been down for nearly 4 hours as of now. Can't send email, can't use iMessage, kind of a problem.

    Is this just a US thing? I am having no problems in the UK.
  • Reply 13 of 42
    singularitysingularity Posts: 1,328member
    jcc wrote: »
    Cook and the senior management should focus instead of spending their time of frivolous thing like giving interviews or voicing their political views. They're not there for that.
    Because you get the CEO and the board to sort out issues with the services? You numpty!
  • Reply 14 of 42
    sdw2001sdw2001 Posts: 18,015member
    SIRI hasn't been working for me for about 30 mins. It says it lost the connection, but other apps function fine.
  • Reply 15 of 42
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member

    Apple page show everything is up now:

  • Reply 16 of 42
    nukemhillnukemhill Posts: 38member
    iTunes Connect can be thrown into this mess, too. Testflight has been spotty at best for a good chunk of the day.
  • Reply 17 of 42
    curtis hannahcurtis hannah Posts: 1,833member
    Apparently it was over a few minutes ago.

    Nevermind the website said it's over, turns out it isn't.
  • Reply 18 of 42
    hillstoneshillstones Posts: 1,490member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Mac_128 View Post

     



    Well, it doesn't exactly "beat" cloud storage. I don't really see it as a competition. I see it as an important compliment. The people who keep insisting I rely on a wireless world exclusively, for which the new rMB is seemingly targeted, conveniently skip over these kinds of problems, which will likely never go away. Local storage for backup of important files, is just as important as having wireless access anywhere. When the network goes down, people can still get their work done. And when you're caught out of the office, the cloud allows people to still get their work done (assuming the internet hasn't gone down LOL)


    Actually it does beat cloud storage because your own example was based on the availability of internet access to get work done.  When that does not exist, and your documents are in the fantasy cloud, you cannot get your work done.

  • Reply 19 of 42
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by hillstones View Post

     

    Actually it does beat cloud storage because your own example was based on the availability of internet access to get work done.  When that does not exist, and your documents are in the fantasy cloud, you cannot get your work done.




    It really depends on the type of work you do. For example the ultimate cloud-based workflow might be something that needs to be maintained in realtime such as worldwide database records or relies on remote collaboration. No amount of local storage is going to help you if your cloud goes down. But, the best way to protect your data is to backup often and have multiple backups in various physical locations. Also important is logical and detailed, dated file naming conventions and organized file structures so you can easily find the latest backup.

  • Reply 20 of 42



    update - sad, because find friends still nit available, as of 5:20 pm here on the east coast. I was effected by outages today, but when you check apples website it simply says they were "slower than normal" Why can they not be truthful?

     

    Multiple iCloud Services - Some users were affected

    Users may have noticed slower than normal performance when using iCloud Drive, My Photo Stream, iWork for iCloud, Backup & Restore, iPhoto Journals, iMessage attachments, Mail Drop, or iMovie Theater.


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