Malcolm Owen
Users of Apple's online services endured a number of issues on Sunday, with outages affecting a variety of iCloud features, including iCloud Drive, the iCloud Keychain, and the Find My app, among others.
Visible on Apple's System Status dashboard, the problems commenced at approximately 9:02am eastern time, across 14 different areas that include iCloud connectivity in some form. Across the collection of services, Apple advised "some users are affected," with the main issue for each being an inability to access the service itself or aspects within each.
The status page has since been updated to show all the issues as "Resolved." The issues were fixed at 1:57pm Eastern Time, which put the time to resolution at 4 hours 55 minutes.
Apple isn't listing any of the services as enduring an "Outage," as it did in September, but describes each as having an "Issue" instead. It is unclear how many users were affected, but Apple's description and avoidance of using the outage term suggests it is a small section of its total user base.
For example, iWork for iCloud's issues relate to users being "unable to share new files or add people to shared files. Meanwhile the Find My app wasn't allowing some users to find the location of people or devices, to list registered devices, play sounds, remotely wipe devices, or place them into lost mode.
The appearance on the System Status page is a confirmation that Apple is aware there are problems, and was working to rectify the issues. Typically such outages last a few hours, and are quickly fixed by Apple's support teams.
The list of services affected are:
- Find My
- iCloud Account & Sign In
- iCloud Backup
- iCloud Bookmarks & Tabs
- iCloud Calendar
- iCloud Contacts
- iCloud Drive
- iCloud Keychain
- iCloud Mail
- iCloud Storage Upgrades
- iWork for iCloud
- Mail Drop
- Photos
- Screen Time
Update 2:15 P.M. Eastern Time, November 1: Report updated with resolution to issues.
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7 Comments
I’ve noticed a Shortcuts issue as well. Cannot add any shortcut.
I don’t understand this statement:
“Typically such outages last a few hours, and are quickly fixed by Apple's support teams.”
Outages that “last a few hours” have not, by definition, been fixed quickly. The downtime clock starts ticking as soon as the outage begins.
i was just working on a Word doc. It’s contents were disappearing like i had never written anything for hours.
Issues in Photos has been going on for a couple of days. I haven’t been able to edit and save pictures since Wednesday.