Your Apple Maps, App Store, iCloud Mail and auxiliary Apple services galore may have hit the skids for a few hours Monday morning, and while the temporary outage was international, most everything is back up and running.  

Fresh on the heels of Wednesday’s Google Maps outage, their rival Apple was slapped with their own international outage Monday morning. The Verge reports that a Monday morning (Pacific Time) Apple outage took many Apple apps and services down, which “included iMessage, some Apple Maps services, iCloud Mail, iCloud Keychain, the App Store, Apple Music, Apple TV Plus, and Podcasts,” among others.

The outages started around 9 a.m. PT Monday morning, and do appear to be resolved at this time. According to data from the website DownDetector, the typical life cycle of Monday’s outages peaked at 10:06 a.m. PT, then quickly dropped precipitously, and by about 1 p.m. PT there were a negligible number of outages. While the scope was international, some Apple users had no outages at all.

Apple has not yet commented publicly on the cause of the outages. But according to the Chronicle, a few other tech companies experienced outages at the same time. “A handful of other companies, including T-Mobile, PayPal and Amazon Web Services, appeared to also be experiencing reports of outages, according to Downdetector data, though those, too, were on a downward trend,” according to the Chron.

It is, perhaps, only a coincidence that these outages come the same day that President Biden was warning the private sector to harden their defenses against potential cyberattacks from Russia.

Apple’s System Status Page shows that about half, but not all public-facing Apple apps had an outage Monday, but are now marked as “Resolved Outage.” That doesn’t tell the whole story.

Apple had internal company problems too, and the Varge’s article has a slideshow showing that a staggering number of Apple products had widespread trouble Monday morning.

I’m sure it sucks if your iCloud Keychain is not working, as you could be locked out of apps or unable to use your Apple Pay. But given what went out, this could have been worse. (Recall that in October’s Facebook outage, employee keychains weren't working and people couldn't get in to fix the servers.)  

But in what is surely the most hilarious aspect to this outage, some employees at Apple stores had to manually write up sales receipts on paper.

Related: Facebook Employee ID Badges Weren’t Working Today, So They Couldn’t Get In to Fix the Outage

Image: Apple via Facebook

This is how Facebook loaded when I tried to open it just now -- my computer telling me to take a fucking break pic.twitter.com/BCoiyM0MKB

— Lilly Dancyger (@lillydancyger) October 11, 2017

Social networks Facebook and Instagram suffered an outage Wednesday morning, but I promise you, despite some news agencies' headlines, you will be just fine.

Down Detector, a website that determines when other websites and apps are down, confirmed the outage with a map indicating that the issues are centered in Europe, the coastal US, and a few spots in South and Central America.

Facebook representatives have yet to respond to SFist's request for comment, nor have they responded to CNet's.

As I just noted, the outage seems to be hitting Europe the hardest, which is perhaps why their headlines are the most end-of-days. Here's a sampling:

Screengrab: Daily Star

Screengrab: Sun

Sure, I'm kind of jealous that I didn't get "what the Zuck" before the Sun did. But here's the thing, you guys: we were fine before Facebook and Instagram existed, and we'll be fine until they fix whatever is going wrong. We will survive this. In fact, our lives might improve. Maybe this is the moment we'll all realize that we don't need that crap and walk away forever. Wouldn't that be something?

Update: All systems are go once again on the social media platforms as of just before noon on the west coast, and just before 3 p.m. ET.

Related: Google And Facebook Under Fire For Spreading Hoaxes During Las Vegas Attack

Google calendar down, if you have a meeting with me today I probably won't be there... pic.twitter.com/tX3lVxU50D

— Julie Dilger (@JulieDil) June 30, 2016

Please scroll down for updates

As I clicked over to my Google Calendar to see if my husband would have time to grab me coffee before his work day began, here's what I saw instead:

Assuming it was just me, I tried again. Same result. So I tried to instant message my better half via Google Hangouts, because, you guys, I am totally out of coffee and starting to die. That didn't work either.

And, guess what, it wasn't just me, as Mashable confirms that Calendars appears to be down for nearly all users, and Hangouts for many.

Google's own app status page, which itself is often delayed in its accuracy, agrees that there is a "service disruption" for calendars. It doesn't note any Hangouts issues. An effort to contact a Google spokesperson for details on the outage wasn't successful at publication time.

So, if you have something to do this morning that you hoped to avoid, you just got a big fat gift from the Google gods. Enjoy.

Update 8:53 a.m.: According to a tweet from Google Calendar's account, the service is staggering back to life.

On their status page, Google reports that as of 8:33, "Service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users in the near future. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change."

At present, however, the company continues to list its calendar app under "Service disruption," so you can probably still get away with missing stuff. For now!

Remember when Facebook went down on August 1? Well, it's happened again, as of around 12:41 p.m. PT. What the hell are you going to do, instead? Work, like some sort of ANIMAL?

Visitors to the popiular social networking site are greeted with this:

And when you try the Facebook status blog, you get this:

...which is hardly an awesome sign.

Hang in there, folks. We're sure things are going to be fine. Until then, see you at Friendster.

Update: By 1:09 p.m. PT, Facebook appears to have returned for most users, as has their status blog. Oddly, at publication time the blog notes no outages in their "Issue History."

Was this a collective fantasy, this brief outage? Pushed to the brink by the relentless ugliness of social media and its users, did our brains all see an outage that was not actually there? If so, I'm OK with that.

A nation of slacking workers released a collective gasp Friday morning, as Facebook started throwing error messages, displaying "network errors," and telling users "Sorry, something went wrong."

There's no news yet from the social networking giant on why they've been so cruelly pulled from the grasps of all of us who'd rather screw around on FB than do actual work today. We just know it's not working, no matter how often we hit refresh.

It looks like the outage started at around 9 a.m. PT, at least, that's when we noticed it. How about you?

Hang in there, America. We can get through this together.

Update 9:39 a.m.: Facebook's status blog notes that at 9 a.m. PT, the site was "experiencing an issue that is affecting all API and web surfaces. Our engineers detected the issue quickly and are working to resolve it ASAP."

Some users are reporting that the site is back up for them, others say they're still seeing issues, still others say they're experiencing a strange sense of relief and liberation from the shackles of status updates, and that they might never go back.

And others...others just called the cops, apparently:

Update 9:48 a.m.: Facebook appears to be back up for all users, at least, that's what the social network claims. They still aren't saying why they went down — but we're speculating that they just wanted to remind us that no matter how much we complain about them, we (not counting you cool "are people still using Facebook?" cats in that collective pronoun, don't worry) still "need" them.

Update 12:30 p.m.: The Wire estimates that Facebook lost about $426,607 in the 19 minutes it was down today. A half-hour outage in June cost the company roughly half a million dollars.

Holy heck, people. Netflix is down again. Or rather it was. Following their Christmas Eve blackout, the movie rental service experienced an outage today. "We're Sorry. The Netflix site is temporarily unavailable. Our engineers are working hard to bring the site back up as quickly as possible," read the site today. (Luckily, we finished watching Sons of Anarchy season 4 late last night, thank god.)

According to a Netflix executive, only the DVD side of things is having issues. However, as TechCrunch points out, some users are claiming technical issues on the streaming side.

But. As of 12:30, Netflix streaming seems to run fine. No need to head over the Hulu to watch the Criterion Collection. The genital self-mutilation and shades of red of Cries & Whispers can wait another day.

Update: Netflix contacted SFist to say: "I wanted to reassure you that Netflix streaming is working normally. DVD shipments are working normally. The dvd.netflix.com Web site, for adding DVDs to a member’s queue, is experiencing some technical issues and is not accessible at all times to all members. Our engineers are working to address this issue. No need to sound the alarm about a streaming outage on New Year’s Eve."

Just before Noon EST/9 a.m. PST Monday, Gmail's mostly reliable email service and that tab you keep open in your browser at work all day was unaccessible, returning "Error 502 (Server Error)!!1" [sic] messages and a sad robot cartoon to users. No official updates from the Gmail blog at this point, but according to handy Internet downtime service, Downrightnow.com and — like, everyone on Twitter — the downtime isn't just you.

As of about 9:20 a.m. Gmail service seems to be going in and out, with some users reporting access to their preferred office timesuck. Although Downrightnow continues to report widespread service disruptions.

Meanwhile, on Twitter, users reacted with the usual mix of comedy, violent threats, despair, and irreverence:

Gmail is down. Mayans making moves early

— Tupac Chopra (@fivefifths) December 10, 2012

The only gmail real thugs use is bullets. They send the best message. Bang bang. Thug life. Reply all. Forward to the block.

— Eddie Gryffindor (@TheDiLLon1) December 10, 2012

Whew. That was close. I had already packed up the car to head out to California in hopes of finding some Gmail there.

— justhaveaseat (@justhaveaseat) December 10, 2012

Ah, my Gmail account is back online. Well, this is awkward. Anyone know how to get blood out of carpet?

— Dave Lewis (@gattaca) December 10, 2012

The Onion took advantage of the situation by tweeting a link to a satirical video skit:

[In Focus] Google Shuts Down Gmail To Show Its Immense Power onion.com/UxyLs8

— The Onion (@TheOnion) December 10, 2012

And comedian/twitter celebrity Rob Delaney summed the whole thing up nicely:

More like G-FAIL! #LOL #DonJohnson #GangamStyle #DogAIDS #MammaGrizzly #DenverNuggets #Oprah

— rob delaney (@robdelaney) December 10, 2012

As of around 10:45 a.m. PST Monday morning, Gmail appears to be back up for most users. Although some service disruptions are still being reported. Anyway, back to your usual gchatting, folks.

An estimated 5,000 people are without power this morning care of PG&E. According to this map, four outages resulted in a major outage for many folks. Power should be restored... soon, hopefully.

According to PG&E, they are "assessing the cause of [Fremont's] outage."

Stay strong, Fremont.

Update: Some power has been restored.

[via KRON 4 News]

Heads up homeward commuters: some of you headed to the Lower Haight might not have power when you get home. According to sources at BCN and the Examiner, the power went out to roughly 5,200 customers including the Castro Muni Station around 2:30 p.m. this afternoon. About 2,900 customers and Muni got their power back within an hour, but PG&E is still reporting an outage in the area as of 5:15 p.m.

No estimate yet as to when the rest of the neighborhood will get their power back on.

Update: As of 7:15 p.m, PG&E reports less than 50 customers are still affected.

[BCN/Appeal]
[SFEx]
[PG&E Outage Map]

Tonight's storm brought several power outages to the Bay Area. Sunset, Richmond, South San Francisco, and Daly City have all been affected by sudden darkness. Most notably, according to Emergency_In_SF, "over 6k customers are without power in the West end of Taraval district."

Also: "[There] is now a much bigger outage. Problem at Daly City sub station affecting 37k SF residents. No ETA for repair."

And last but not least: "There is now another power outage in Richmond district affecting 5k residents.No ETA for repair."

We're getting reports of a power outage in San Francisco this morning. On readers comments "Just came from Lyon & Grove. Apparently the power is out in the neighborhood because a Muni bus struck a power pole."

And a tipster tells SFist, "Bus (21) headed inbound hit a power pole at baker. Power out for the last hour. A few blocks taped off. " We're also hearing that 2 to 3 blocks on Hayes are blocked off.

We'll update as soon as we know more.

Update 10:39: SF MTA spokesperson Kristen Holland tells SFist: "At 8:45 a.m., the pole of the power unit on top of a 21 Hayes trolley bus traveling inbound at Hayes and Baker snagged the overhead wire which caught a PG&E wire. Our scene cleared at 9:58 a.m."

A power outage brought the world as we know it to a halt today in the SOMA / LORI neighborhood, most egregiously affecting SFIst HQ. (Damn you to hell again, PG&E.) From what we can tell, power along Third Street from Townsend up to Harrison is sans electricity as of 1:15 p.m.. For those of you who need electricity and a wireless connection in the hood, we recommend going to Epicenter Cafe at 764 Harrison, between Third and Fourth streets. They have wifi, power, passersby AND great coffee. UPDATE: Power had been restored. Please leaved 21 Amendment and South Park, and return to your offices at once.

Thousands of Santa Clara, San Benito, and Santa Cruz county residents are currently without phone service this morning. They can't even call 911 in case of an emergency. Why? Because of an old, AT&T-owned fiber optic line (leased out to Verizon) that went bust. "Verizon is completely down; other carriers are intermittent at best," said Zachary DeVine, a Santa Clara County spokesman. If residents of Morgan Hill, Gilroy, San Martin and Santa Cruz County cannot make a call to 911, officials "are urging people to go to their nearest fire or police department or local hospital or flag down an emergency vehicle."

Update: Outage is due to do the work of vandals. According to SFGate, they "cut fiber-optic cable lines belonging to AT&T and Sprint at two locations early today, knocking out landline and cellular phone service to thousands of residential customers and businesses in southern Santa Clara County, in Santa Cruz and San Benito counties and along the Peninsula." No arrests have been made.

No word on when phone service would be restored.

Ours was. And how. It would neither send nor receive email for hours. The horror.

Hitting all carriers, it turns out the BlackBerry outage afflicted enterprise users across the United States and Canada today. And the "company has no estimate for when service will be restored." Read more about it here. (Our service seems to be working fine as of 5 p.m., btw.)

You win, iPhone. You...you win.