Apple and MTV were partnered in the duty to announce the Video Music Award nominees this year, but many Apple services crashed, including the iOS and Mac App Stores, Apple Music and Beats1, Apple TV, the iBooks Store, the Podcasts app along with several iTunes services (iTunes in the cloud, iTunes Match, iTunes Store, iTunes U). The outage wasn't universal, but was still an unexpected inconvenience for users and the company itself.
Beats1 was supposed to announce the nominees at 7:00 am Eastern Standard Time, but several users couldn't load the station. MTV decided to stick to its original plan and shared the announcement on Twitter when Beats1 failed.
These services first experienced issues on the morning of Tuesday, July 21 that extended into the afternoon. Service was restored around 2:00 pm EST. But there is some good to this horror story — a good amount of cloud services remained in working condition, including Maps, iCloud Drive, iMessage and Siri.
High traffic from the VMAs was likely the cause of these difficulties, however, it's a bit strange that Apple wouldn't be able to withstand the surge. Especially after its recent launch of Apple Music, Apple should be able to take on the world.
Whatever the true cause was, this debacle didn't shine a good light on Apple, Inc. which has experienced trouble with rebuilding its reputation for cloud services after their past flops. As of now, Apple has stated that it is investigating the issues and will release additional information as soon as it is able.
If you or your company need help dealing with some of Apple's occasional downfalls, contact MC Services today for certified Apple support services.
