NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) - Apple resolved a widespread network outage on Monday (March 21) that had knocked services such as Apple Music, iCloud and the App Store offline for some users and hobbled its 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 pick-ups, 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 did not 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 3.40pm New York time, Apple’s website was updated to indicate that the issues were resolved.

Apple’s user complaints had begun climbing shortly after 12pm 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 was not the only tech giant suffering problems Monday, according to Downdetector. Amazon.com’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 did not jar investors, who sent Apple shares up 0.9 per cent to US$165.38 (S$224.73) on Monday. The stock has dropped 6.9 per cent this year.