Skip to main content

Half-hour outage affects Apple App Store, iMessage, iCloud Drive, and more

Experience issues with the App Store today? You’re not alone. Both the iOS and Mac App Store were listed as having experienced issues today, along with other iCloud services, like iCloud Drive and iMessage. By midafternoon, the issues seem to have been resolved.

The iCloud issues seem to have started around 10 minutes earlier than the App Store issues this morning, and it’s currently unclear if the two are linked.

So what should you do if you have issues with these services? Well, there’s not really much you can do. You could try turning your phone off and back on again, but considering the issues are linked to cloud-based services, it’s unlikely that would do anything. Ultimately, when issues like this arise, you usually just need to wait until they’re resolved on Apple’s end.

Outages like this aren’t uncommon for cloud-based services, and while they can be frustrating, they’re usually fixed without any serious loss of user data. If you’re still experiencing issues, or experience new issues, you can check Apple’s system status page here. Thankfully, not all users were affected by the outages — and many could still access the App Stores and their iCloud services without any issues. Others may have been able to access the services, but with slow load times. In total, the issues seem to have lasted a little over 30 minutes.

All the major tech companies experience issues like this from time to time. Late last year, an Amazon Web Services outage caused a number of large websites and services to go offline, including the likes of Roku, Adobe, and more.

Editors' Recommendations

Christian de Looper
Christian’s interest in technology began as a child in Australia, when he stumbled upon a computer at a garage sale that he…
Nothing’s iMessage for Android app is unbelievably bad
The Nothing Chats splash page in the app.

Earlier this week, Nothing did the unexpected and launched the "Nothing Chats" app for the Nothing Phone 2. The premise? Let anyone with a Nothing Phone 2 send and receive texts via iMessage. Nothing partnered with Sunbird to make Nothing Chats work, with Nothing essentially using Sunbird's own messaging tech to bring iMessage to Android.

It was a bold idea ... but one that was short-lived. That's because Nothing Chats is already dead (for the time being) due to a shocking number of security vulnerabilities that were discovered almost immediately. And by security vulnerabilities, we don't mean minor oversights that could have been easy to overlook. We're talking about major, game-breaking design flaws that massively compromise the personal information of anyone who used Nothing Chats.
The problem with Nothing Chats
iMessage on an iPhone 15 Pro Max (left) and Nothing Chats on a Nothing Phone 2 Andy Boxall / Digital Trends

Read more
One of our favorite Android phones just got its own iMessage app
Nothing Chats app on a. phone.

Nothing is trying to bridge the great blue/green bubble divide for Android users of iMessage. This is not a personal crusade to shatter walls and open windows, as much as Nothing CEO Carl Pei would want you to believe that. Instead, Nothing is piggybacking on tech created by New York-based startup Sunbird. 
Technically, the Sunbird app can be installed on any Android phone and it features a blue bubble for all iMessage text exchanges involving an Android phone. No more green bubble shame that could get you kicked out of groups for disrupting the harmony or even slim your dating chances. That’s how bad it is! 
Nothing is adopting the Sunbird tech and bundling it as its very own app under the name Nothing Chats. But here’s the fun part. The app only works on the Nothing Phone 2 and not the Nothing Phone 1. And this life-altering boon will only be bestowed upon users in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., or the EU bloc.

The app is currently in the beta phase, which means some iMessage features will be broken or absent. Once the app is downloaded on your Nothing Phone 2, you can create a new account or sign up with your Apple ID to get going with blue bubble texts. 
Just in case you’re concerned, all messages will be end-to-end encrypted, and the app doesn’t collect any personal information, such as the users’ geographic location or the texts exchanged. Right now, Sunbird and Nothing have not detailed the iMessage features and those that are broken. 
We made iMessage for Android...
The Washington Post tried an early version of the Nothing Chats app and notes that the blue bubble system works just fine. Texts between an Android device and an iPhone are neatly arranged in a thread, and multimedia exchange is also allowed at full quality. 
However, message editing is apparently not available, and a double-tap gesture for responding with a quick emoji doesn’t work either. We don’t know when these features will be added. Nothing's Sunbird-based app will expand to other territories soon. 
Sunbird, however, offers a handful of other tricks aside from serving the iMessage blue bubble on Android. It also brings all your other messaging apps, such as WhatsApp and Instagram, in one place. This isn’t an original formula, as Beeper offers the same convenience.

Read more
I love Apple, but it’s totally wrong about iMessage and RCS
An iPhone 15 Pro showing the main iMessage screen.

I’ve been using an iPhone ever since 2008, starting with the original and then every generation since. For several years, the iPhone was only capable of SMS texting, with MMS support arriving with iOS 3 in 2009.

But in 2011, Apple created something new: iMessage. It first arrived on iOS and then went to the Mac in 2012 to replace iChat. iMessage is basically an instant messaging service that is exclusive to all Apple products: iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac. You can send text, images and video, documents, rich preview links, stickers, and more between one another. You can also see if a message is delivered, send read receipts (if you want), and everything is encrypted. With iOS 16, you can even edit and unsend messages within a certain time frame.

Read more