Apple iTunes, App Store Recovers After Outage

Apple has recovered its iTunes and App store after a lengthy outage on Wednesday was blamed on a DNS problem.

The outage of the Apple services took place on Wednesday and began just before 5am ET, and lasted for 12 hours.

Service Outage

The outage is a rare event for Apple, and affected the iOS App Store, Mac App Store, iTunes music and video marketplace and iBooks shop. Users were unable to download music, films and other material or update existing files.

There are reports that systems were also down at Apple retail stores around the world.

Those services are Apple’s main commercial outlets for dealing with the general public, and some reports reckon the downtime could have cost Apple as much as £17m. However, Apple currently has $178bn (£117.3bn) in cash sitting in the bank, so there is unlikely to be much concern at the financial impact of the outage for the Cupertino, California-based company.

According to the Apple status page, normal service resumed at 5.04pm ET on Wednesday. The outage has been attributed to an internal Domain Name System error.

“The cause was an internal DNS error at Apple,” Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr was quoted as saying by the Sydney Morning Herald.

Rare Apology

And Apple also took the opportunity to issue a rare apology.

“We apologise to our customers experiencing problems with iTunes and other services this morning,” Apple told CNBC. “The cause was an internal DNS error at Apple. We’re working to make all of the services available to customers as soon as possible, and we thank everyone for their patience.”

A similar outage occurred in early September, according to Appleinsider.com.

The outage came just days after Apple unveiled more details about its wearable Watch device.

Available in three versions (or ‘collections’) the Apple Watch will go on sale in the UK and eight other countries on April 24, with pre-orders opening on April 10, with prices starting from $349 but rising to over $10,000 for the most premium model.

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