Apple is currently facing a significant outage of their iTunes Store and App Store, leaving many users unable to make new purchases or update their apps. Interestingly, the App Store itself still remains online on both iOS and OS X, but the ability to purchase or update apps greets users with an error stating that the device cannot connect to the iTunes Store.
On Friday, Apple e-mailed developers to inform them of some minor iTunes Connect maintenance scheduled for today – but considering that it was only supposed to affect the contract and financial segments of iTunes Connect, it’s unclear whether the maintenance might be the result of the outage, or simply a coincidence. Apple has acknowledged the outage on their system status page.
From Friday’s e-mail:
The Contracts, Tax, and Banking module on iTunes Connect will undergo scheduled maintenance onWednesday, August 7, 2013 (PT).
On that day, the following functionality in the Contracts, Tax, and Banking module will not be available:
- Requesting new contracts
- Changing and updating banking details
- Submitting tax forms
If you have any questions about this scheduled maintenance, use the Contact Us module.
Also strange is that not all users are experiencing the outage. I myself am unable to connect to the iTunes Store – but my friends at the local university campus bookstore are able to connect without any problems whatsoever. We’ll keep you updated if and when we hear anything further.
Update: Apple has updated their status page to reflect that the iBookstore, Mac App Store, iTunes Match, and iTunes in the Cloud are also down.
Update 2: All of Apple’s services are now back online.
