If you’re unable to access some of Apple’s services and have been hurling curses at Apple, Vodafone or whoever your network provider is … well, it’s not their fault (this time!). Multiple sources from around the globe have reported that a majority of Apple’s servers have gone offline.
Services affected include the iOS App Store, Apple TV App Store, Mac App Store, iTunes backup services, most iCloud based services, the Volume Purchase Program, and to a large extent, Apple Music, and Apple News.
Users reported not being able to access any/all of these services over the last 48 hours. The problem doesn’t seem to be universal as many people were able to use these services without any problems. The problem isn’t specific to any geographical location either, since users from the same city were experiencing mixed response from Apple Servers.
The problem has been confirmed by Apple, as seen on their official systems’ status page:
This comes after a lot of iOS users from around the world complained of their WhatsApp misbehaving. We’re not sure if and how the two problems are connected; however, it’s not outside the realm of probability to imagine that they are.
We can assure you that there’s no need to panic. Such outages are not uncommon in the world of tech. The big players have all experienced such server failures at least once, if not more times, and they have a robust framework to avoid the same. In rare cases where they do take a hit – such as this one — they have multiple backup servers that kick in to minimise the damage caused by the malfunction.
The same goes for all of your data. Apple has multiple back-up centres that keeps two, sometimes even three, copies of all the data. Google, Microsoft, Dropbox, etc, all do that. For them, your data is precious!!
Update: Since the time of the publication of this article, all the App Stores have come back online. Issues still persist with iCloud Services, Photos, and Mail Drop.