Apple service outages are at unacceptable level given the importance of the ecosystem

The number of Apple service outages lately seems to have risen to the point where they’ve become almost routine.

This isn’t great for any tech giant, but when the ecosystem is such a huge part of the appeal of Apple products, it becomes a far bigger deal …

Apple outages this year

Let’s look just at Apple service outages and issues in the four-and-a-bit months of the year to date – and these are just the examples found by a quick search of our own site, which only reports the more widespread problems:

• Jan 19: Apple TV+ service outage causing ‘content unavailable’ error on Apple TV, iPhone app goes offline
• Feb 20: Apple Support website down for some users with persistent ‘Invalid URL’ error
• Feb: 23: App Store, Apple Music and other Apple services currently facing outage
• Apr 1: Apple Weather app not working on your devices? You’re not alone
• Apr 4: Apple Weather app down for many, showing no data
• Apr 5: Multiple Apple services are currently facing slowdowns and outages
• Apr 6: Apple Weather app is down again, company acknowledges outage
• Apr 10: Apple services including Apple Music and the App Store are currently down
• Apr 15: Users complain about bug causing Apple devices to constantly ask for Apple ID password
• Apr 24: Reports of Apple Store down – more likely a glitch than a product launch
• May 2: Apple confirms outage impacting some Apple Pay, Apple Card, and Apple Cash features
• May 5: Apple Music down for some users [Update: Now Apple Card, Apple support too]
• May 9: Apple Weather not working for some users, third time in a month
• May 11: Apple ID services currently down for many, users unable to login or make payments

Or, uh, today

Or just take a snapshot on DownDetector for the past 24 hours:

Apple also doesn’t like admitting problems

This is made worse by Apple’s reluctance to admit that it is experiencing problems.

I can’t count the number of times I see tweets about Apple service outages, confirm them on DownDetector, and then check Apple’s system status page to see nothing but green lights.

This isn’t just misleading, it actively causes hassles for Apple’s customer, because if we’re experiencing a problem, and Apple says everything is ok on its end, we’re likely to end up wasting time – and getting frustrating – trying to troubleshoot a non-existent problem on our end.

I don’t expect 100% uptime, but I expect better than this

Now, I get it. There’s no such thing as 100% reliable tech, and these things will happen. I’m not expecting Apple services to have 100% uptime.

I also accept that some of these issues are First World Problems. Nobody is going to die if they have to close an unresponsive Weather app and go check a website instead.

But a massive part of Apple’s marketing pitch is the benefits of the ecosystem, and Services are an increasingly important part of Apple’s business. Services are the only part of Apple’s business to have enjoyed an unbroken growth record for the past five years, and brings in more revenue than each of Mac, iPad, and wearables.

So when they aren’t reliable, that’s no small matter. And, to me at least, Apple services seem to be falling a long way short of delivering the level of robustness and contingency planning than I’d expect.

Am I being unfair? Or do you agree that Apple services outages are more frequent than they should be? Please take our poll, and share your thoughts in the comments.

Image: Rishi/Unsplash

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