Apple Music, App Store, and Mac App Store services have been returned to normal after outages affecting “some users” were reported on Apple’s system status page, just one day after Apple released the first developer betas of iOS 13 and MacOS Catalina to developers.
The issues themselves began at around 5 a.m. PT on Tuesday, and according to Apple, were returned to normal a little after 8 a.m. It’s currently unclear if the outages had anything to do with the release of Apple’s new operating systems to developers, or if the two are unrelated.
It seems as though during the outages, users were completely unable to access the affected services. Usually, when Apple experiences issues with its services, it indicates as such with a yellow circle next to those services on its system status page. For a full outage, a red circle is instead there, but the red circle is almost never used. Still, Apple is, of course, quick to downplay the issue, noting that only “some users” were affected, and that it was investigating.
Apple just revamped its music-related services at its Worldwide Developers Conference, finally doing away with iTunes branding in favor of separate Mac apps for Music, Podcasts, and TV. When it comes to Music, the change seems to be mostly branding — Apple will keep the ability to rip music from CDs and allow users to purchase downloads in the Music app, so it won’t totally revolve around the Apple Music streaming service. The Podcasts app, on the other hand, will likely be a Project Marzipan version of the Podcasts app for iOS. Project Marzipan is Apple’s attempt to allow developers to port iOS apps over to the Mac.
Of course, while the services mark a difference for how users will interact with their music, podcasts, and TV shows, there may not be a major difference on Apple’s back-end, meaning that hopefully there won’t be too many more outages over the next few months. The new operating systems — iOS 13, iPadOS, MacOS, and WatchOS — are set to roll out to the public in the fall, likely alongside Apple’s new iPhone and Apple Watch models at its September event.
