Apple’s .Mac down [UPDATED: 4:04pm ET: back online)

Apple’s .Mac service is down.

Users attempting to access .Mac are presented with a page stating:

This service is temporarily unavailable.
We’re working hard to restore normal service.

.Mac email services have been spotty today, but other .Mac features have been accessible from the website prior to this message being displayed.

[UPDATED: 4:04pm ET: .mac is back online with the message, “Members cannot access .Mac services. They will be restored ASAP.” Mail and “Back to My Mac” are currently indicated as being inaccessible to all or some .Mac members.]

Source: http://www.mac.com/

28 Comments

  1. Not sure if it is related, but iPhoto Book Publishing the last few days has been very error prone. Many users in Discussions bitching about failed uploads.
    Tis the season. Hopefully Apple gets it fixed.

  2. Despite some negative comments over the past couple of years regarding .Mac, I went ahead and decided to try it for a year for the ‘discounted’ price of $70 when I recently bought a new iMac.

    If it simplifies my life somewhat in terms of exchanging data, posting photos and movies, and syncing iCal, contacts and bookmarks, then I will consider it to be of reasonable value.

    I sincerely hope that I did not waste $70.

  3. @Jamie:

    Not sure what else you are using, but my .mac addresses seem the least Viagra-prone. Today’s outage notwithstanding, I am pretty happy with the service. I have five family members on it, and the combination of storage and integration seems worth it. I tried hard to like gmail, but don’t. Some folks love it, but I do not like web-based email except as a last alternative, and I don’t like all the rigmarole I have to go through to integrate iCal and Mail with it. That’s just my opinion; I know many who love it, and I am sure YMMV.

  4. As much as I worship Apple. .Mac is so not Apple and performance and routine downtime is appalling.

    Of course, I lie to Microsoft users just how great .Mac is and how I could not live without it. However, truth is, it is predictably unreliable.

    If only .Mac was as robust as the Apple Store. Notice how the Apple Store IS NEVER DOWN. Oh yes, can anyone remember when google mail is ever down? Like never! Maybe Apple should farm out .Mac to Google. There is a sure winner there!

    Another often discussed issue is that .Mac is usually not working in some capacity and is down for maintenance during business hours.

  5. Has anyone had problems with their cable or DSL connections over the last week or so? I have an idea that solar storm activity may be the culprit. It can even affect the power grid.
    It could be the .Mac’s problem, as well

  6. I’ve never really had trouble with .Mac but I don’t utilize all of the available features. If a lot of people do have trouble then I agree Apple needs to address the problems. They are tying too many things to .Mac to allow poor performance.

  7. I have not had any problems with .Mac since it was upgraded awhile back.

    When I did a clean instal of Leopard, everything went just as it should with Sync (and Time Machine).

    My Mail has not skipped a beat, except possibly today. I say that because the mail was all their when I got home, and on my iPhone. Idid my email early today and had no problems then.

    My calendars are there. My Web Gallery is OK. And when I updated pictures from iPhoto last night they loaded just fine when my daughter synced her subscription this morning. (I was sharing Christmas desktop pics)

    My Notes are all there.

    I don’t get spam as I use an alias for most stuff.

    Sorry. It just seems to work for me. Maybe they are upgrading or adding something.

  8. .Mac is my least spam-prone e-mail address among the four I use regularly.

    I had significant problems with gMail not fetching current messages in a timely manner a while back. I also prefer using an actual e-mail client vs. webmail, and use gMail exclusively via Apple Mail.app. It has not proven any more reliable than other accounts of mine. Not rushing to funnel all of my mail to my gMail account anytime soon.

  9. I agree with MR. My .Mac email is the least spam prone of anything else I have. Not happy with the outage today but overall it’s been good. I don’t understand the Google stockholders posting here who want us all to switch to gMail and berate .Mac.

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