The Black Box of iCloud

Dan Moren, also at Six Colors:

That second agent proved quite capable, not only agreeing that the situation was strange, but also looking into issues on Apple’s side. Which led to the somewhat bizarre conclusion of this story: after perhaps 20 minutes on the phone, he seemed to hit on something. I heard him laugh and say something along the lines of “that explains it” and then, with my consent, put me on hold. When he came back, he said — and I’m not exactly quoting, but close enough: “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you any more than this, but all your services should be back up pretty much exactly 12 hours after they went down.” [...]

So I waited the rest of the day. At this point, I had received no email since the early morning, and a number of my other apps — though not all — were non-functional. It made me realize just how much of my life was dependent on Apple’s online services — a somewhat sobering proposition.

I spent the next few hours largely offline, but kept an eye on the clock. And, sure enough, at 9pm on the dot, everything flipped back on: all my Find My friends showed up, my email started slowly trickling in, and I was able to finally fully log back into my iCloud account on my MacBook Air — just in time to go to bed.

What a strange and maddening situation.

★ Monday, 9 October 2023