Apple App Store is still down worldwide
Apple App Store and iTunes Store both experiencing problems worldwide, and have been since 10am this morning
Apple is suffering a major systems outage, with both the App Store (Mac and iOS), iTunes Store and iBooks Store suffering problems. The problems kicked off at around 10am GMT and have been ongoing throughout the day – as we write this at 17:30 GMT, there are still considerable issues.
Problems are affecting Apple users around the world and even in Apple retail stores. Expert Reviews contributor, Mike Jennings, tweeted that he had “just been into an Apple Store and their systems are down, too”. iOS devices are throwing up multiple error messages in the Apple Stores. Attempts to search for apps in the App Store are met with:
Problems have been fluctuating all day. At the moment the App Store lets you view Charts, search for apps and even view specific app details; however, attempting to download anything just fails without an error message. Earlier, attempts to search for apps in the App Store were met with:
Whilst clicking on items in the iTunes Store resulted in:
The Mac App Store is suffering from a similar problem. Although it wasn’t displaying any information earlier in the day, the app store is now displaying information while search works. However, when we tried to download anything we got a strange error message after entering our password: “plist parsing error”.
The Apple apps submission service, iTunes Connect, is also reportedly experiencing problems. The cause of the outage is not yet clear, although Apple didn’t recognise the problem at the start of the day, with the company’s status update page reporting that everything is working was working, even though it clearly wasn’t.
Since then, Apple has updated its status page to show that there are problems with the App Store, iBooks Store, iTunes Store and Mac App Store, with all of them coloured red with a warning message that says, “Service is unavailable for all users”. The status page is also reporting that iCloud Mail and iCloud Account & Sign In was also affected, although as of around 12:45 GMT the problem looks to have been resolved.
Although Apple has acknowledged the problem, the company has not yet said what’s causing it or when it will be resolved. It has said that it’s nothing to do with the iOS 8.2 update, which was announced with the Apple Watch and new MacBook at event on Monday night. We’ll keep an eye on the issue and bring you more information as we have it.
