The Apple iTunes and App stores are back up after being unavailable for users to access throughout the day on Wednesday.
It’s rare for Apple’s online stores to experience a hiccup of this magnitude, as a result many people were frustrated and annoyed.
However, it is not going to have much of an impact (if any) on Apple’s revenue as people aren’t going to stop buying stuff because of it.
Users were met with a message like this if they tried to access the iTunes store during the outage.
“They made a mistake and they screwed it up,” Gartner analyst Van Baker said.
“People will be frustrated or annoyed, but they won’t give up on what they’re going to buy,” he said.
What surprised Baker was how long it took Apple to fix the problem.
Apple users around the world were unable to access the online stores from 2 a.m. PT until around 1:45 p.m PT – when the problem appeared to be completely fixed.
The outage lasted longer than normal
Outages occur, it is normal for online services to have the occasional problem. However, the length of the outage that occurred on Wednesday is rare for a company like Apple.
In September a similar outage occurred, but it was fixed within six hours.
Although the outage isn’t going to make a dent in revenue, it is going to affect the reputation of the firm. In the words of former CEO Steve Jobs, Apple products are supposed to “just work”.
Apple was quick to make a public apology to users.
Shares of the tech giant closed 1.8 percent lower at $122.24 on Wednesday.