Apple's App and iTunes Stores are down (update: back up)
Good luck trying to buy anything that isn't hardware from Apple right now. The company recently confirmed on its services status dashboard that the iOS and Mac App Stores, as well as the iTunes Store, are "unavailable for all users." The silver lining? Some people might still have luck picking up some new reading from the iBooks Store, but we wouldn't count on it. Don't be fooled, either: For now you can still sift through the stores' wares and listings as though nothing happened, but you won't actually be able to purchase anything. The first spate of issues started making the rounds at about 5AM Eastern, and Twitter's slowly been swelling with confused, clamoring consumers ever since. At time of writing, Apple hasn't yet said how far along it is in the recovery process, or when users can expect to access the stores once more.
Update: Service appears to be fully restored, check for more details after the break.
This widespread outage is Apple's second big burst of bad luck in as many days. After showing off a near-ready Apple Watch and a svelte new Macbook on Monday to considerable acclaim, a report from The Intercept outlined the CIA's multi-year effort to crack the security of Apple's devices and create a hush-hush customized version of XCode that would build security backdoors into apps created with it.
Update: Apple's issued statement to CNBC, saying that the fault was due to an internal DNS error:
"We apologize to our customers experiencing problems with iTunes and other services this morning. The cause was an internal DNS error at Apple. We're working to make all of the services available to customers as soon as possible, and we thank everyone for their patience."
Update 2: As of about 5PM ET the App Store and iTunes store seem to be operating normally, and Apple's status page reports all is well.
