Apple has refused or ignored media requests for contact throughout the day and the company’s system status webpages are still showing everything as functioning normally.
This is quickly disproven by visiting most Apple services, however. Viewing content in either the iOS App Store or Mac Store displays a simple error message with app listings completely inaccessible. Some media content can reportedly be seen but is not available for purchase.
There are multiple reports on social media of iCloud consistently failing to login, preventing the viewing of files stored on the service. iTunes Connect has also totally collapsed in some regions and Apple’s support network is not functioning correctly, frustrating users trying to resolve the issues they are experiencing.
The not-so-informative error message “STATUS_CODE_ERROR” is being displayed directly to users as a general response to requests for data from any of the services.
The services have been intermittently going offline repetitively throughout the day with varying effects depending on geographical area. Social media reports suggest that issues could be experienced in nearly any nation where the services are ordinarily available.
With Apple denying to users that anything is wrong, it has been left to angry app developers to get in touch with the company and find out what has been going on. The Next Web has reportedly spoken to developers who have done exactly that. They were apparently advised that they were aware of the ongoing issues and that a fix would be available within the “next two hours,” indicating around 14:00-15:00GMT.
In the mean time, Apple users will just have to sit this out and wait for everything to be brought back to life. With this being Apple, we are unlikely to get any clear explanation of the cause. After all, the company status page still says that everything is “working correctly”, despite what the users may be seeing.
[UPDATE 16:55GMT] The Apple status page is now showing the App Store, iBooks Store and iTunes Store as unavailable for all users. Issues with iCloud Mail and iCloud Sign in reported in this article are now said to be fixed.
[UPDATE 21:25GMT] The Apple status page now shows that as of shortly after 20:00GMT all services should have been restored and should now be functioning correctly.
