The rivalry between Apple and Microsoft continued last night as the fruity firm’s cloud services took a tumble a mere day after Azure crapped itself.
While Apple has remained silent on what happened (we asked; it did not respond), the vast majority of its services wobbled over a two-hour period early this morning (UK time).
Issues began at around 1am affecting services including Apple TV, iCloud Mail, iWork for iCloud, and the company’s App Store. On its System Status page the company said “Some users were affected”, along with “Users experienced a problem with this service.”
The “problem” being that it simply didn’t work. A glance at social media shows disappointed fanatics wailing about Apple TV stopping midstream, Apple Music hitting the pause button, and iCloud Photos leaping from the nearest ledge.
At one point even the System Status page reportedly fell over.
Apple’s inability to keep its cloud in the air came a day after Microsoft suffered an embarrassing Azure failure, prompting us to ponder if Redmond has a reliability problem.
Unless some late-night (and early morning) fondling was involved, the outage did not cause too much European outrage. Some US users, on the other hand, found themselves at the pointy end of Apple’s issues and unable to express their feelings on the US presidential debate via the medium of iCloud email.
Things appear back to normal this morning, and The Register was heartened to note that fanboi assistant Siri did not appear to be affected.
In marked contrast to the approach taken by Microsoft, Apple has yet to explain what happened, why it happened, and why it will not happen again. We will update should a statement be forthcoming.
In the meantime, we anxiously await Cook & co’s inevitable “you’re using it wrong” retort.
Yay cloud.
Robin Edgar
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