Reports breaking on Friday morning showed that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) was having problems with its Cloud service, called iCloud, in Australia. The reports, which include Twitter posts and other user complaints, appear to be centered in Australia, though there have been some instances of problems occurring in the country’s neighbour New Zealand.
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has not yet made a comment about the problems with iCloud, and it is not clear at this stage whether the problem is affecting all users or it is restricted to a subset. Reports about the malfunction were picked up by 9to5mac.com earlier this morning and form the bulk of the information available on the outage so far.
Apple iCloud stops working
The complaints about the functionality of iCloud this morning centered on the lack of an official Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) response to the Australian troubles with iCloud. The Apple system status page has yet to record any problems with the company’s cloud service, and the lack of recognition is making users in Australia less than happy with the current state of affairs.
Some of the Twitter users who were reporting on the Australian iCloud outage say that the problems with the company’s cloud service have been causing other applications, like their email and calendar, to stop working correctly. Some users have even reported problems with the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) iMessage service.
Some Twitter users suggested that the service was also broken in the UK, though those reports were few and far between at time of writing, and are worth ignoring until some kind of official confirmation, or a mass of unofficial complaints, clear up the confusion.
Australia suffers from issues of isolation that even years of research into telecommunications have been relatively unsuccessful in fixing. The country lies extraordinarily far away from most of the data centers and other infrastructure that cause the internet to work effectively. The problems stemming from the continent’s distance may have something to do with the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) iCloud outage.
Apple relies on iCloud for service delivery
Tech companies appear to have worked out exactly what it takes to keep their data centers running, and that competence is driving users to services like iCloud. The fact that the major websites so rarely goes down makes worries about losing all data far less pressing. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has been just as good as its rivals in keeping its infrastructure running smoothly, but that may have changed today.
There is no telling exactly what is wrong with the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) iCloud service in Australia, and there is no way of knowing, at least until Apple recognizes the problem, whether it is down for jut some or all of the country’s users. Damage to the reputation of the cloud at this stage in its development could slow adoption rates.
The smoothness of the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) iCloud is just about the only reason for users to pay the Cupertino company to use the service. When Apple addresses the problems with iCloud in Australia we will update accordingly.
