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Apple Offers No Explanation for 7-Hour Outage (nbcnews.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the missing-Mac-music dept.

Apple services went offline for up to 7 hours Thursday -- and the company has yet to offer an explanation. An anonymous reader writes: The outage affected the App Store, iTunes in the Cloud, Apple TV, Mail Drop, Find my iPhone, and Photos. During the outage, Apple responded to complaints on Twitter, "Thank you for the information. We're aware of this issue and are investigating," Tech Times reports that the iCloud Music Library had also experienced an outage on Wednesday, and that just weeks ago Apple released an operating system update which bricked several iPad Pros. And yesterday Amazon also experienced a service outage.

91 comments

  1. Because Fuck You by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's why.

    1. Re:Because Fuck You by jazzis · · Score: 2

      Yeah. Amazon servers have outage. Affected Appl servicese.

    2. Re: Because Fuck You by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Its an iFeature!

    3. Re: Because Fuck You by jazzis · · Score: 1

      Correction: It's a AWS iFeature

  2. this kind of thing is usually a DDoS by YesIAmAScript · · Score: 3, Interesting

    When companies have outages like this and don't want to talk about it it's usually a DDoS.

    They don't want to brag they can be DDoSed nor do they want to help pump up the group who did it. They don't want to give any info which is feedback about how well it worked either so the attackers can tune their attacks or gauge their chance of success if it was a dry run.

    --
    http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
    1. Re:this kind of thing is usually a DDoS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      They don't want to give any info which is feedback about how well it worked either so the attackers can tune their attacks or gauge their chance of success if it was a dry run.

      Nor do they want to risk exposing the possibility that they paid a ransom or protection money to halt the attack or "prevent" a future attack, if something like that was part of this particular occurrence, that is.

    2. Re:this kind of thing is usually a DDoS by NotInHere · · Score: 0

      They should just get Cloudflare and call it done.

    3. Re:this kind of thing is usually a DDoS by yoshi_mon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The main reason they don't want to talk about it is because they keep wanting every end user to believe that "the cloud" is some sort of mythical thing. That it will always be there to have their data and that they should pay their monthly subs to have that privilege.

      Of course in reality we IT professionals know that "the cloud" is nothing new and not even remotely secure. Local data is always better than remote data and we have the tools to make that a very secure platform for end users. However that is just a one time cost and well...we can't have that now can we Win10?

      --

      Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
    4. Re:this kind of thing is usually a DDoS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There is no cloud.

      https://d21ii91i3y6o6h.cloudfront.net/gallery_images/from_proof/3442/large/1418280711/die-cut-stickers.png

    5. Re: this kind of thing is usually a DDoS by Rosyna · · Score: 4, Interesting

      While Apple isn't obligated to state while something was does, there are reasons other than a DDoS that seem more likely.

      One is that various Apple services use both Amazon S3 and Microsoft Azure for file storage. Given that not every Apple service was down for everyone, it's possible the Amazon outage was related to the Apple outage.

      Secondly, numerous other services on the internets were down, including numerous .gov websites belonging to states (California.gov, Connecticut.gov), it's possible a regional Internet backbone was having issues.

      Although the most likely reason remains Apple that was working on some backend changes for new features and/or services they'll be announcing at WWDC and something went wrong.

    6. Re: this kind of thing is usually a DDoS by Rosyna · · Score: 2

      Err, "While Apple isn't obligated to state why something was down".

      Sigh, I wish Slashdot supported preview mode on mobile.

    7. Re:this kind of thing is usually a DDoS by quantaman · · Score: 1

      When companies have outages like this and don't want to talk about it it's usually a DDoS.

      They don't want to brag they can be DDoSed nor do they want to help pump up the group who did it. They don't want to give any info which is feedback about how well it worked either so the attackers can tune their attacks or gauge their chance of success if it was a dry run.

      Or motivate more attacks when the media starts digging and finds out Apple payed a ransom.

      --
      I stole this Sig
    8. Re:this kind of thing is usually a DDoS by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

      I reckon their server was installing Windows 10.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    9. Re: this kind of thing is usually a DDoS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There was a huge cell phone outage yesterday as well, mostly cricket, but also at&t and Verizon.

    10. Re:this kind of thing is usually a DDoS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They mostly likely had a botched release. iTunes (web services) deploys new releases on Thursdays, every 6 weeks or so. The deployment tend to be very monolitic too

      If you have TV Shows subscriptions, you’ll notice that Thursday shows once in a while become available later than usual (way past midnight)

    11. Re:this kind of thing is usually a DDoS by swillden · · Score: 1

      Local data is always better than remote data

      In what way? Reliability of local data managed by a typical user is generally much worse than that of well-managed remote data. You talk about security, but fail to define what you're securing the data against. Depending on the threat model there are pros and cons, but I'd say that in the case of the typical person their data is more secure against theft and/or leakage when it's stored in a professionally-managed data center behind a good authentication system.

      There are advantages to local data, but cloud storage also has significant advantages. There is no one perfect option for all situations, and for many situations cloud storage is better. It facilitates multi-device access, is resilient against device loss or damage and enables collaboration. It can have availability problems, but those can be mitigated with local caching.

      All of my important data lives primarily in the cloud, automatically synced to multiple devices. Should the cloud servers become permanently unavailable, I still have local copies, but I strongly expect the real failure modes to be in the other direction -- my local copies may get destroyed, deleted, etc., but the cloud copies will be safe. And for the average user who doesn't think carefully about how to manage their data, good remote storage is an order of magnitude safer and more reliable.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    12. Re:this kind of thing is usually a DDoS by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 1

      I used to think the cloud was great.

      then I learned that clouds suck. now I use RAIN, Randomly Available Internet Nodes.

      oh, wait. nevermind.

      --

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
    13. Re: this kind of thing is usually a DDoS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      When multiple govts and apple services both go down and they share the same provider (Amazon), my conclusion is Amazon got DDos attacked. The simple and obvious conclusion to me lol

    14. Re:this kind of thing is usually a DDoS by myowntrueself · · Score: 1

      When companies have outages like this and don't want to talk about it it's usually a DDoS.

      They don't want to brag they can be DDoSed nor do they want to help pump up the group who did it. They don't want to give any info which is feedback about how well it worked either so the attackers can tune their attacks or gauge their chance of success if it was a dry run.

      Its like dealing with misbehaving toddlers. You don't tell them off, you don't make a fuss, you don't punish them. Thats all attention.

      The only way to make it not worth their while to misbehave is to completely ignore them. Once they've grown up a bit you can use other strategies but for people who are, for all intents and purposes, gigantic toddlers, you have to just ignore.

      --
      In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
    15. Re: this kind of thing is usually a DDoS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Go back to your room. Mom and Dad are trying to have a serious conversation.

    16. Re: this kind of thing is usually a DDoS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Spoken like a true modern parent.

    17. Re: this kind of thing is usually a DDoS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It couldnt have anything to do with everything being built, programmed, and supported from China and India, right?

    18. Re: this kind of thing is usually a DDoS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Servers dont run win10. Seriously though, does anyone think microsuck isnt going to try the same aggressive shit with Server 2016?

    19. Re: this kind of thing is usually a DDoS by myowntrueself · · Score: 1

      Spoken like a true modern parent.

      So what are you going to do? Indulge them? Encourage the behaviour? Punishment isn't a deterrent; its encouragement.

      --
      In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
    20. Re: this kind of thing is usually a DDoS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      First reasonable and insightful post in this idiot "Blame Apple First discussion".

    21. Re: this kind of thing is usually a DDoS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "have a serious conversation"
      You must be forgetting where you are.

    22. Re: this kind of thing is usually a DDoS by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Servers dont run win10.

      Don't go giving them ideas.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    23. Re: this kind of thing is usually a DDoS by trparky · · Score: 1

      Yeah... ideas are bad.

    24. Re:this kind of thing is usually a DDoS by yoshi_mon · · Score: 1

      Local data in the very real sense of keeping your personal data to yourself is a thing. Do I need to go on an NSA rant about how anything you transmit over the internet is compromised?

      Further local data is just that local. If they go offline they have their backups right there. They don't have to worry about going online to put their data back in place. They can do it offline if needed.

      I understand your arguments for server (cloud) data and have no problem with using server storage when it is appropriate. But we have the ability to have large amounts of data at our local fingertips. Why would I want to give it away when my 1st point is very real? If you could say that the NSA, and all other bodies, were not there then you might have a case. However you do not. The NSA and all the other things are snooping on your data right now. Thank you no.

      --

      Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
    25. Re:this kind of thing is usually a DDoS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Local data is always better than remote data

      In what way? Reliability of local data managed by a typical user is generally much worse than that of well-managed remote data. You talk about security, but fail to define what you're securing the data against. Depending on the threat model there are pros and cons, but I'd say that in the case of the typical person their data is more secure against theft and/or leakage when it's stored in a professionally-managed data center behind a good authentication system.

      There are advantages to local data, but cloud storage also has significant advantages. There is no one perfect option for all situations, and for many situations cloud storage is better. It facilitates multi-device access, is resilient against device loss or damage and enables collaboration. It can have availability problems, but those can be mitigated with local caching.

      All of my important data lives primarily in the cloud, automatically synced to multiple devices. Should the cloud servers become permanently unavailable, I still have local copies, but I strongly expect the real failure modes to be in the other direction -- my local copies may get destroyed, deleted, etc., but the cloud copies will be safe. And for the average user who doesn't think carefully about how to manage their data, good remote storage is an order of magnitude safer and more reliable.

      No, it's not ten times safer on the cloud. It's infinitely less safe on the cloud. Why would you make it easier for a malicious attacker targeting you specifically by providing them greater means and opportunity to attack?

      For all but a fraction of a fraction of one percent of users, their data is only secured by it's uselessness and boringness. Most of their data on the cloud has already been stolen and discarded. Their local data? Not nearly as much. And data which has remained air gapped even less so.

      So get out of here with meaningless rhetoric like the cloud being ONE ORDER OF MAGNITUDE safer.

    26. Re:this kind of thing is usually a DDoS by swillden · · Score: 1

      Do I need to go on an NSA rant about how anything you transmit over the internet is compromised?

      In practice, what does that mean to the average person? I fully agree that we should take political action to stop NSA spying, on principle and as a precaution against future abuses, but it has zero impact on my personal security if the NSA reads everything I write, and that is the case for the vast majority of people. So when it comes to figuring out how to manage my data, I'm going to focus on what actually matters. More than anything, that's the probability that the data will be lost due to user error, device failure or catastrophe (house fire, etc.). For the subset of my data that's actually a little sensitive, e.g. my financial information, I also want good access control in addition to reliability.

      Seriously, if you have to choose between reliable data which the NSA may look at and unreliable data, which do you choose? And that's not a false dichotomy, that is the choice faced by most people, because they don't have the knowledge required to make sure their data doesn't get lost or destroyed.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  3. TLA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Do you have any idea how long it takes to grab a disk image of that many disks?

    I'm sure some 3/4 letter agency arranged for a nice little outage so they could have some uninterrupted time in the data center and slurp some data.

    Don't ask, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear citizen.

    We are trustworthy after all, just look at how many folks we have working for us, all wearing american flag lapel pins and happily reciting the oath of allegiance every day.

    Never mind our toilet paper is printed with the constitution and the bill of rights.

    Just shut up and submit.

    Bend over, grab your ankles and think of america.

    1. Re: TLA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, I can confirm, the KKK was the three letter agency responsible for the outage. White power!

    2. Re: TLA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You forgot to include, "because of the children."

    3. Re: TLA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You forgot to include, "because of the children."

      I can't wait until all those children we were protecting all those years grow up and start to vote.

      Hopefully they'll know a better way to "because" their own children by then.

  4. Micro$oft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Surely Micro$oft is responsible for this. Amirite My fellow Slashdotters?

    1. Re: Micro$oft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or systemd. (You asked)

  5. Awful editing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    1) It's really late to post this story

    2) Wow, there's a ton of tangential or unrelated crap in the summary

    Holy shit the editing sucks now. Amazon's downtime is almost certainly unrelated to Apple's outage. The part about Apple's bad OS update is completely unrelated. Why add that crap to the summary?

    1. Re: Awful editing by topham · · Score: 1, Informative

      Yep. They can't let the facts get in the way either. None of my Apple services were down. Lots of people were affected, but it certainly wasn't universal.

    2. Re: Awful editing by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 2

      How can the Apple TV be down anyway? It's a device, not a service. I didn't experience any problem watching Netflix with it.

    3. Re: Awful editing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah fuck you David and your last shitty post.

    4. Re: Awful editing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How can the Apple TV be down anyway? It's a device, not a service. I didn't experience any problem watching Netflix with it.

      I really didn't think I would find Jen Barber here on Slashdot, walking around with the "the internet" in her hands asking stupid questions.

      Fucking bloody hell.

    5. Re:Awful editing by Anubis+IV · · Score: 4, Informative

      Amazon's downtime is almost certainly unrelated to Apple's outage.

      As I recall (and I may be wrong), a lot of Apple's services are still built on top of AWS and Azure. They've been transitioning away from Amazon and Microsoft to their home-grown solutions, but a lot of their core services actually use their competitor's back-ends. As such, it's entirely probable that an outage at the one may be related to an outage at the other happening at the same time.

    6. Re: Awful editing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It most definitely is a service.

      Can you pick and choose any website or can any other company load their content on the device with JUST your say so without rooting/jb?

      Wouldn't be surprised if all content must be routed through APL servers.

    7. Re:Awful editing by dgatwood · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes, and one problem with that approach is that too many of Apple's services are centralized unnecessarily. I mean, a sizable percentage of iOS users already have Time Capsule base stations that could easily support iOS backups, but Apple won't let us use them, instead forcing us to either use these cloud-based solutions or back up manually to our laptops and then back up those backups to our Time Capsules.

      Taken one step further, Find My iPhone could just as easily do some sort of wide-area Bonjour registration with that Time Capsule even when you aren't at home. This would require some centralized service for some users, but the infrastructure would be much simpler for that case (basically DynDNS), and for folks with public static IPs (whether IPv4 or IPv6), the infrastructure requirements would be nonexistent.

      Same goes for photo storage and iTunes in the Cloud, potentially, depending on how fast your home Internet connection is.

      And there's no reason you can't use DropBox or other services if Mail Drop goes down.

      So basically, out of this entire list of services, had the system allowed decentralization, the only service that would have had a widespread impact would have been the App Store.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    8. Re:Awful editing by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      Reminds me of Michigan State's on-campus electricity generator. It could burn fossil fuels, but that's too expensive, so they boil water electrically, from the local electric utility. Cutting out the middle man? Forget it.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    9. Re: Awful editing by MichaelJ · · Score: 1

      Actually during that timeframe I found that my Apple TV 3 would not connect to Netflix, while every other device in the house could. So I restarted the ATV3, and all I got were two icons onscreen: Settings, and Computers. At the time I had no idea what was going on. Now it makes unfortunate sense.

      --

      Michael J.
      Root, God, what is difference?
    10. Re: Awful editing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Apple TV isn't a fucking web browser you moron.

  6. Sometimes... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Apple services went offline for up to 7 hours Thursday

    Sometimes convenience isn't all that convenient

  7. Do they owe an explanation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Lots of companies choose not to disclose the reasons for or an explanation of an outage.

    1. Re: Do they owe an explanation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe they forgot to change their TeamViewer password that they were using for their MySpace account.

  8. Internet of Things by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And THIS is why we should move everything to the cloud! Yes!

  9. Wait a minute, does it have to explain? by bogaboga · · Score: 1

    Apple services went offline for up to 7 hours Thursday -- and the company has yet to offer an explanation...

    Can someone tell us whether Apple's "contract" with its fans, or users of its services, contains any clause that requires it to explain incidents like the one described?

    1. Re: Wait a minute, does it have to explain? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Queue the first world problems meme.

    2. Re:Wait a minute, does it have to explain? by Calydor · · Score: 1

      Given frequent stories about iTunes deleting your offline library of music and choosing for you that it is better to download it every time you want to listen to it, having iTunes suddenly be unreachable to download your music is worthy of an explanation, yes.

      --
      -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
    3. Re:Wait a minute, does it have to explain? by ATMAvatar · · Score: 1

      It probably doesn't. However, there has been a trend where many tech businesses will do public post mortems of downtime. Some of it is to let people know what happened, but mostly, it's a way of assuring those who use the services that the business knows what happened and that measures have been put into place to prevent it from happening again.

      It's a pretty cheap and easy PR move (since you have to do the post mortem analysis anyways) that can turn what would normally be perceived as a huge negative to much less negative (and perhaps even positive!)

      While in aggregate, Apple is perceived very highly by the public, they have been getting beaten up lately by very publicly-visible issues with some of their services -- iTunes in particular. I can find no fault in someone wanting some reassurances after such a long outage, and I am a little curious why you do.

      --
      "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
    4. Re: Wait a minute, does it have to explain? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's cue, you dumbass.

    5. Re:Wait a minute, does it have to explain? by geekmux · · Score: 2, Informative

      Apple services went offline for up to 7 hours Thursday -- and the company has yet to offer an explanation...

      Can someone tell us whether Apple's "contract" with its fans, or users of its services, contains any clause that requires it to explain incidents like the one described?

      Does Customer Relationship Management mean anything anymore, or are consumers that much in denial about being nothing more than mindless lemmings, blindly accepting of anything from their service masters?

    6. Re: Wait a minute, does it have to explain? by BronsCon · · Score: 1

      Not if you only have to deal with them one at a time.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
  10. Apple, the only certification-lacking cloud... by ffkom · · Score: 0

    ... provider. German computer magazine c't recently ran an article on which cloud providers adhere to which standard certification (such as ISO 27k) (full article paywalled), and amongst the 14 cloud providers they tested, Apple was the only one not providing any proof of any certification. But sure, asking Apple for standards compliance and certifications is like asking the catholic church for an independent proof that their god exists and acts on their prayers.

    1. Re:Apple, the only certification-lacking cloud... by ledow · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I was once asked to gather EU data protection guarantees from various cloud companies. Basically, a new law came in that meant that we couldn't just take their word that they only stored and processed our data on EU datacentres, but an actual written guarantee. ISO 27001 was apart of that.

      At the time, Apple were the only large cloud company completely unable / unwilling to supply one. I don't know if that's changed because, well... since then we've only ever supplied fake personal information and/or disabled iCloud on products that we use, and the decision was made that Google Apps would be the cloud services of choice because they complied and were free (for schools).

      Hilarious that people point fingers at Google for privacy and data processing, and yet Apple was the one to fail hardest on this, for a period of many months, forcing our hand.

    2. Re:Apple, the only certification-lacking cloud... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was once asked to gather EU data protection guarantees from various cloud companies. Basically, a new law came in that meant that we couldn't just take their word that they only stored and processed our data on EU datacentres, but an actual written guarantee. ISO 27001 was apart of that.

      At the time, Apple were the only large cloud company completely unable / unwilling to supply one. I don't know if that's changed because, well... since then we've only ever supplied fake personal information and/or disabled iCloud on products that we use, and the decision was made that Google Apps would be the cloud services of choice because they complied and were free (for schools).

      Hilarious that people point fingers at Google for privacy and data processing, and yet Apple was the one to fail hardest on this, for a period of many months, forcing our hand.

      Sorry, but LOL @ cloud security certification, I can't help it.

    3. Re: Apple, the only certification-lacking cloud... by ledow · · Score: 2

      iPads.
      Education.

      Though I agree with your sentiment, someone should tell Apple that they aren't targeting education. And the rest of the world that also believes that (because they are TOLD that).

    4. Re:Apple, the only certification-lacking cloud... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The most hilarious part is you actually believed Google's guarantee. They are only one NSL away from breaking any guarantee they have made, and they knew it while still giving you that "guarantee", how unethical is that, giving a written guarantee that they knew they are powerless to keep?

      In fact, every American company knew it, and every one that gave you the guarantee is just as unethical.

  11. It just works! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You're holding it wrong!

  12. Nothing to see here folks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You were looking at the Internet wrong.

  13. maybe im paranoid by LodCrappo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    apple, amazon, teamviewer and maybe more have had similarish seeming outages recently. one theory in the teamviewer incident was that attackers manipulated dns to gather credentials that the teamviewer client leaked when redirected. another is that the LinkedIn compromise combined with users using the same password on multiple sites lead to the teamviewer exploits and maybe some on Tumblr and myspace too.

    spooky week for security things. if this is an organized thing and now apple accounts are targeted, about to get worse. but maybe its nothing, i honestly have no idea.

    --
    -Lod
    1. Re:maybe im paranoid by antdude · · Score: 1

      Same for others according to this news article, but who knows how accurate that is since no other sites seem to mention it too.

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  14. Global Warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is what done it.

  15. A dev is claiming responsibility by drunkenoafoffofb3ta · · Score: 5, Interesting

    (He uploaded a series of >2Gb app updates at the same time). https://m.facebook.com/story.p...

    1. Re: A dev is claiming responsibility by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Moleorlrofkeofekofrkfkekf.

      His code must be shit. 2 apps both 2gb in size. And ones a map app? You have to be kidding me.

    2. Re:A dev is claiming responsibility by SeaFox · · Score: 1

      Pfft. Yeah, he wishes he had the power to bring down a milti-billion dollar company's cloud infrastructure.
      "I uploaded a couple app updates at once and look what I did! Hurr durr."

      Cause you know, Apple has so few developers they rarely get that kind of load. So it only takes a few simultaneous transfers to crash their system.

    3. Re:A dev is claiming responsibility by dgatwood · · Score: 1

      Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    4. Re: A dev is claiming responsibility by Gary+Perkins · · Score: 1

      The apps' share a common codebase. The data is different.

  16. That's it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm shorting Apple stock.

  17. Windows 10 upgrade in progress :) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    You didn't think that Apple runs only Apple computers, did you? Looks like there's been another unintended upgrade. Funny, same thing might be happening to Cricket Wireless today.

  18. Also outage for Cisco WebE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    WebEx was down for most of Friday:
    https://mobile.twitter.com/WebEx

  19. your holding it wrong DUH by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    your holding it wrong DUH and when that doesnt work, you can always buy the newest latest Ishiny!

  20. Hearing rumors this was an active hack by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hearing rumors that this is all due to a Senior Apple network admin having password credentials hacked.

  21. What did Apple users do? by Art+Challenor · · Score: 1

    Only slightly tongue in cheek... What did the users do? 7 hours without TV, Tunes and Photos. There has to have been some major angst.

  22. DDoS and massive security breach by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    is the only reason they would keep quiet about it. Do you have sensitive stuff on your Apple cloud? Well, now is the time to take precautions. And as they say, "sell!".

  23. So did Cricket Wireless and AT&T by chill · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure of the total duration, but Cricket and AT&T both had major, multi-hour outages on Thursday starting about 4:15 p.m. Eastern. From the chart below, it looks like the majority of it lasted...about 7 hours.

    http://downdetector.com/status/cricket-wireless

    Things that make you go "hmmmm...."

    --
    Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
  24. Reality by DaMattster · · Score: 1

    Technology, i.e. mechanics and electronics, is failure prone. Since major failures don't occur often, we become psychologically conditioned to believe that technology should never fail. I used to battle this all of the time when people would complain about emails not being delivered. It is (and always has been) a best effort service. The SMTP protocol makes allowances for delivery of an email to take 7 days but because most of the time delivery is instantaneous, people have expectations that this will always be. I loved some of the end-users complain that it worked yesterday. Well, yesterday is gone and today is today. I had a PHB once complain about email so I cited the very white paper written on the protocol. I was out of hot water but clearly he did not like the answer.

  25. The obvious answer by wierd_w · · Score: 1

    Seriously-- Itunes and all associated services run on storage controllers.

    To me, the obvious answer is a botched OS upgrade on the storage controller head units.

    If memory serves, Apple uses Netapp controllers. By now, the support for OnTap 7 should be nearing the end of the legacy support stage. That means data migration to clustered mode in Ontap 8.

    Most likely, they established a snapmirror relationship with the new filer equipment, and got the data transferred, but couldnt get the VIF configuration right-- or their 7 mode filer pair went into a takeover-giveback loop cycle of panics.

    Not saying netapp is bad equipment, just saying things can and sometimes do happen in a deployment upgrade.

    I dont have access to anything that would give me insider knowledge of exactly what happened, but these seem like plausible explanations for an extended, unplanned 7 hour downtime.

    It could also be a fibrechannel switch deciding it needed to drop its configuration data and act all goofy, taking out a big chunk of the fabric.

    Or worse still, a combination of the two.

    I seriously doubt it was planned or malicious.

  26. To hide this. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://i.imgur.com/oll9Cp6.jpg

    Now try to hide that picture from imgur. Double dare.

    dabbbft

  27. I smell government hackers by samantha · · Score: 1

    Forces in government are miffed with Apple. On a rogue basis or not they sent a message. Call me paranoid if you like.

    1. Re:I smell government hackers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      https://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9198749&cid=52259013

      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3582640/Open-sewers-mildewed-walls-one-toilet-FORTY-people-Shocking-pictures-dirty-dormitories-Apple-s-iPhone-workers-live-like-animals.html

      https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Apple+iPhone+6+Teardown+by+X-ray/29640

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Cook

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China

      The problem with spies and/or homosexuals is you can't trust them.

  28. Anything to do with those itunes pws on pastebin? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just askin'.

  29. It can't have been a DDoS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When companies have outages like this and don't want to talk about it it's usually a DDoS.

    They don't want to brag they can be DDoSed nor do they want to help pump up the group who did it. They don't want to give any info which is feedback about how well it worked either so the attackers can tune their attacks or gauge their chance of success if it was a dry run.

    Apple never used DOS, let alone DDoS. They created their own operating system, and built upon that until they realized how much better and easier it would be if they just used the BSD kernel, and so started to base their OS on that, calling it the whole time while they were working on it, "OS X," for the union of the X Window Operating System, and the UniX environment.

  30. No outage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's Apple so there was no outage. Everybody was mistaken.

    ;-)