Where were you during the great Apple App Store outage of 2015?
That may be going a bit too far, but a recent IT malfunction that left untold numbers of consumers unable to download or purchase apps or iTunes files was treated by many media outlets and analysts as something of historic significance. Estimates vary, but the outage lasted at least 11 or 12 hours and prompted Apple to issue a rare apology for the time it took to restore normal operations.
On Twitter, developers suggested they and their users should be able to expect better from one of the leading, if not the leading, distribution vehicle for mobile apps and games:
"Apple need to up their game with service reliability. Google nails it in this area." -- @totalkharnage
As Apple worked to restore the problem, developers and other app tool providers were checking back as often as their customers.
"Just managed to download an app. #hope" - @ourielohayon
Analysts quickly tried to tabulate the financial impact of the outage, which turned out to be a huge number that developers greeted with shock and also some skepticism:
"@jonahkai: Apple Losing $2 Million Per Hour With App Store Outage OUCH http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/03/11/apple-app-store-struck-with-major-outage …" -@bereanopartners
"$2 million per hour, eh?
http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/03/11/apple-app-store-struck-with-major-outage …" -- @jailbird
When the root cause of the App Store outage was revealed, developers seemed surprised Apple's empire could be brought down so easily.
"LOL!
'@iPadPro: Apple says an internal DNS error is causing the App Store and iTunes outage http://dlvr.it/8wZtz9 '" -@StaticLiquid
And even as things got back to normal, some developers were realizing they needed to be proactive for their own customer base--a smart move if this kind of problem happens again.
"App Store may not yet show the apps. Here's direct links:
Ulysses for Mac: http://geni.us/3KfE
Ulysses for iPad: http://geni.us/pN1 " -- @ulyssesapp