When this article was first published (March 22 at 5.43 am AEDT) Apple was experiencing massive technical difficulties, and widespread reports of outages for its various services were flooding the internet.
The company’s own status page at the time showed that several of its most popular products weren’t working. Multiple reports — including from Down Detector, which tracks website and app outages — showed that users of iCloud, Apple Music, the App Store, iTunes, Apple TV, iMessage, Mail, Contacts, Find My, Apple Maps, FaceTime, Apple Fitness+ and even our beloved domestic helper Siri all appearing to be having major problems. Bloomberg reported that Apple’s internal systems, both for its corporate offices and its Apple Store retail locations, were likewise down. The company reportedly sent internal messages notifying employees that domain name system (DNS) problems led to the outage. The extent of the outages and what regions they are affecting was unclear at the time, but they appeared to be affecting a majority of Apple’s major products and services.
Twitter was also alight with complaints from people claiming they couldn’t reach some of the company’s most vital platforms and services:
Am I the only one with iPhones unable to text right now?!
I have a work and a personal iPhone, and both are unable to text right now.@Apple @AppleSupport #iphone #imessage
— Dillon Thomas (@DillonMThomas) March 21, 2022
About two hours later, Apple’s services came back online. Apple’s system status page showed that all of the services that had previously been listed as “down” were back in the green. It’s still unclear what happened exactly, and Apple never returned Gizmodo’s email for comment on the situation.
At the time, Apple’s system status page — which keeps a live tally of how well its products and services are working — showed that the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Business Manager, Apple Radio and Podcasts, Apple Arcade, Apple Schoolwork and Apple TV + were all having major problems, but only “some users” are affected, not all. Apple hasn’t issued a statement on what it is doing about the outages or what their cause might be.
It’s possible that whatever was causing the problems for Apple also caused issues for a number of other companies, as Down Detector was showing a number of other large companies and platforms also reporting outages.
Apple’s system status page lagged behind many users’ experiences of the outage, and the fact that it took a minute to update seriously peeved several.
is apple’s system status page just a big lie? what’s the point of having it if it does not accurately show the system status?
apple maps (and other services) are definitely down.
do they update this page manually or something?
did the one person who can do that call in sick? pic.twitter.com/nlFDIL7xOk— Louie Mantia, Jr. (@Mantia) March 21, 2022
At 8.30 am AEDT, it was reported Apple’s services and apps were experiencing yet another outage, with complaints on Twitter about problems with Apple Maps, the App Store, Apple Music, Weather, Podcasts and the Apple online store, MacRumours reported. By 1.30 pm AEDT, Apple’s status page was showing green everywhere. Hopefully whatever was going on has been resolved.
This article has been updated since it was first published. The original headline read: Yes, Apple Services Are Down Right Now.