5-Hour iMessage Blackout Prompts Customer Backlash

While Apple was busy trying to restore investor confidence after the 28% drop in stock price, the users started facing a problem of their own. The iMessage, Apple’s flagship messaging service, faced an outage on Sunday 18^th November, which lasted for around five hours. Starting at around 3pm ET, the outage caused many users to head to social networks to vent their anger and frustration. Over the time the service was out, Twitter was flooded with messages about iMessage.

Apparently, iMessage wasn’t the only service which went out. The users who were trying to start up FaceTime faced the same problem. They couldn’t place any video calls using their handheld devices. In short, most of the people using Apple’s products were without the messaging service and video calling for almost five hours.

It took Apple a few hours to rectify the problem and both services were back online and working fine by 8pm ET. However, that was only temporary respite as the services faced another outage on Monday morning. This time, not all users were affected and it was dealt with much quicker than the one on Sunday.

For a person who has spent hundreds of dollars on an iPhone or iPad, facing such problems is incredibly frustrating. The aura Apple has built over the years and its dominance makes people feel that nothing can go wrong for the company. Well, that is not exactly true as the events of the past couple of months show. First the prices of Apple’s stock feel like anything, losing almost 30% of their value. Investor confidence in the company is already on a shaky ground.

The iMessage outage only made things worse for Apple. To add insult to injury, most of the users vent their frustration out on social networks, in full view of the world. No doubt Apple would have earned a lot of bad press over the occurrence. Not to mention it was cannon fodder for those who believe that Apple is a substandard company which charges exorbitant prices for average products.

Apple would do well to issue an apology like they did over the Maps mess. Denial could only hurt Apple’s reputation and its image in the eyes of its customer. With the holiday season coming up, this was one incident which Apple could have done without. Still this is nothing when compared to losing $187 billion in market value.

[Images via iphoneheadlines & appleinsider]