Apple’s online services are experiencing sporadic outages, affecting users of software as diverse as iTunes, Game Centre and iCloud.
The company’s iCloud system status page initially showed no reported issues, even as users were unable to log in to iCloud, download new apps, or play multiplayer games.
However, around 3pm GMT, the company updated the support page, to acknowledge that iCloud had been down for four hours and that its online stores, including all its app stores, its ebook store and its music store, are still down over six hours after the outages began.
The sporadic nature of the outages means that an initial failure to connect may be resolved minutes later, only to fail again after that.
Although a mere annoyance for most users, those whose working days focus on Apple’s iCloud suite of productivity software are rather more hamstrung.
I see the downside of storing important files on #icloud when the system goes down and you cannot log in. Fortunately I don't do that!!
— Markos Martong (@mmartong) March 11, 2015
All my iCloud documents are not accessible from my iPad now after a restore. Seems like iCloud is down to some extent.
— david toub (@dbtoub) March 11, 2015
An Apple spokesperson told the Guardian: “We apologise to our customers experiencing problems with iTunes and other services this morning. The cause was an internal DNS error at Apple. We’re working to make all of the services available to customers as soon as possible, and we thank everyone for their patience.”
