Apple resolves outage that hobbled apps and internal systems

In addition to frustrating Apple customers, the problems prevented corporate employees from working from home and kept retail workers from completing tasks, according to staff members who asked not to be identified. The outage hindered product repairs, swaps and item pickups, and limited corporate workers’ ability to communicate and access internal websites.

Apple told staff that the outage stemmed from domain name system, or DNS, problems. DNS failures occur when a server fails to connect to an internet protocol address, and are often caused by human errors.  The Cupertino, California-based company didn’t respond to requests for comment, but confirmed the problems on its website, saying 15 services were down for “some users.” That included the App Store, Arcade, TV+, music and podcasts.

By around 3:40 p.m New York time, Apple’s website was updated to indicate that the issues were resolved.

Apple’s user complaints had begun climbing shortly after 12 p.m. New York time, according to Downdetector, which tracks outages. The site reported problems with iMessage, the Apple Support app, maps and the company’s online store.

Outages of this scale are rare for Apple, which makes a seamless customer experience a top priority. But it wasn’t the only tech giant suffering problems Monday, according to Downdetector. Amazon.com Inc.’s web services, along with Google and wireless carriers, saw customer complaints grow around the same time — though not as sharply. Amazon’s own service health dashboard didn’t show any recent incidents.

The outages didn’t jar investors, who sent Apple shares up 0.9% to $165.38 on Monday. The stock has dropped 6.9% this year.