Yet another outage hits Apple's App Store & iTunes, preventing searches, discovery & downloads

Apple's cloud-based woes continue to reappear, with a major outage hitting the App Store, iTunes Store and other digital storefronts on Wednesday, seemingly affecting users around the world and preventing them from searching for and downloading apps or other content [updated].

The outage prevented users from searching for anything, simply returning an error saying there are no results for the query. It affected the iTunes Store, App Store, iBookstore, and Mac App Store.

Update: By early Wednesday afternoon, the issues were fixed.

Discovery was also affected, with the "Featured" menu missing graphics and links or some apps under various categories. The "Top Charts" was affected as well, with the "Paid" and "Top Grossing" categories displaying the error "No Top Charts Content Available."

Attempts to search on the Mac App Store simply failed to return results, with an error saying it could not connect. There were also errors on the "Featured" page, though the "Top Charts" do load for Mac apps.

In the event that a user could view a particular app listing, attempts to download also failed.

Once again, Apple's own System Status page incorrectly claimed that the App Store remained online with no issues. However, tests from multiple locations and devices revealed the outage was widespread.

The latest snafu comes just a few weeks after an outage on the iTunes Store and App Store lasted for more than 7 hours. The lengthy downtime seen earlier this month prompted Apple to issue an apology, blaming the problem on an "internal DNS error."