UPDATED 19:58 EST / JULY 04 2019

CLOUD

Apple resolves widespread iCloud outage that hit services across the U.S.

Most of Apple Inc.’s iCloud services were offline for almost an hour Thursday as the company suffered a widespread systems outage affecting users across the U.S.

Users reported being unable to access their iCloud accounts, as well as services such as Find My Friends, Find My iPhone, Game Center, Photos and Screen Time.

Apple said in an update that only “some” users were affected by the outage, but numerous reports on social media suggested that the impact was felt by a large number of its customers.

For about 45 minutes, Apple’s iCloud system status page displayed a message saying “Users may be experiencing a problem with the service” for almost all of its services.

screen-shot-2019-07-04-at-13-45-15-pm

The company now appears to have recovered from the outage, as the system status page reports that all of the issues affecting its iCloud services have been resolved.

The outage was nonetheless embarrassing for Apple since its retail store systems were also affected, leaving some customers unable to complete transactions or support requests.

The outage had also extended to financial services such as Apple Pay, preventing some users’ payments from being processed.

Apple probably deserves some credit for fixing the problems in less than hour, however. That was much quicker than the four hours it took Google LLC to fix its own problems following an outage that took Gmail, YouTube, G Suite and other services offline last month.

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller told SiliconANGLE the widespread nature of the outage and the speedy fix meant it was most likely caused by a network issue of some sort.

“It would be good if Apple could live up to cloud standards and share exactly what went wrong,” Mueller said. “What is a concern is the wide functional spread. Customer services and retail services should operate independently. That begs some resiliency questions.”

Photo: Håkan Dahlström/Flickr

A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Support our mission to keep content open and free by engaging with theCUBE community. Join theCUBE’s Alumni Trust Network, where technology leaders connect, share intelligence and create opportunities.

  • 15M+ viewers of theCUBE videos, powering conversations across AI, cloud, cybersecurity and more
  • 11.4k+ theCUBE alumni — Connect with more than 11,400 tech and business leaders shaping the future through a unique trusted-based network.
About SiliconANGLE Media
SiliconANGLE Media is a recognized leader in digital media innovation, uniting breakthrough technology, strategic insights and real-time audience engagement. As the parent company of SiliconANGLE, theCUBE Network, theCUBE Research, CUBE365, theCUBE AI and theCUBE SuperStudios — with flagship locations in Silicon Valley and the New York Stock Exchange — SiliconANGLE Media operates at the intersection of media, technology and AI.

Founded by tech visionaries John Furrier and Dave Vellante, SiliconANGLE Media has built a dynamic ecosystem of industry-leading digital media brands that reach 15+ million elite tech professionals. Our new proprietary theCUBE AI Video Cloud is breaking ground in audience interaction, leveraging theCUBEai.com neural network to help technology companies make data-driven decisions and stay at the forefront of industry conversations.