Apple is back online following outage that saw popular services including iCloud and Photos go down

Apple is back online following a partial outage that affected several of its popular services.

The tech giant’s System Status dashboard showed outages in Photos, Find My Friend and eight iCloud services from Wedneday afternoon.

iCloud Backup was also part of this group, which meant users couldn’t backup their devices. 

Earlier on Wednesday, users were experiencing a ‘slow or unavailable’ service with Apple Music, the App Store, iMessage and iTunes – but the error was fixed within two hours.

The outage began around 1:30pm ET, but has now been resolved. 

Apple experienced disruptions or partial outages with a number of its services on Wednesday afternoon

Cloud Backup, iCloud Bookmarks & Tabs, iCloud Calendar, iCloud Contacts, iCloud Drive, iCloud Keychain, iCloud Mail, iCloud Notes, and iCloud Storage Upgraders showed a red triangle, which signifies an outage. 

Apple Photos and Find My Friend also went down. 

Many of these services, such as iCloud Notes and iCloud Calendar, are key tools for workers who use them to conduct daily tasks.  

However, these were just the tip of the iceberg, as earlier in the day Apple said it noticed issues in other services around 8:26AM ET, according to SlashGear.

And it was more favorable features that went down – the App Store, Apple Books, Apple Music and Apple Music. 

Earlier on Wednesday users were experiencing a ‘slow or unavailable’ service with Apple Music, the App Store, iMessage and iTunes – but the error was fixed within two hours

However, iCloud Backup is part of this group, which means users cannot backup their devices

And iTunes Store, Mac App Store, and Apple Radio were also shown with the red triangle. 

Apple’s Status page said these services were out starting at 8:26AM ET and issues were resolved at 10:43AM ET. 

This is the second mishap Apple has faced in the last week, as in January the tech giant released an update to its operating system, iOS 14.4, to fix three security vulnerabilities that ‘may have been actively exploited’ by hackers. 

The tech giant released a statement on its Apple Support page that shows two bugs were identified in Webkit, the browser engine that powers Safari and one in the core operating system, Kernel.

Many of these services, such as iCloud Notes and iCloud Calendar, are key tools for workers who use them to conduct daily tasks

The Kernel flaw was described as a ‘race condition’ that can allow malicious applications to elevate privileges, but the update fixes it with ‘improved locking.’

Vulnerabilities in WebKit have been rectified with improved restrictions, but without the update hackers could remotely access devices ‘to cause arbitrary code execution,’ Apple states. 

Apple rarely announces issues with its systems that could be used by bad actors in malicious activity, but the tech giant is open to receiving reports from others who find a security of privacy vulnerability.