Breaking: Apple Suffers MAJOR iTunes Server Issues, Worldwide [Updated]

Posted on December 11th, 2008. Written by Arron.

This morning, many iTunes customers (including me) will find that they cannot log-in to their accounts. The reason? Apple. Their iTunes servers are currently experiencing huge issues, and it’s not just in the UK, it’s apparently worldwide.

[Update] – Issues now seem to have been resolved.

Yesterday, my iTunes account was functioning fine. I bought a few tracks, a few apps and all was dandy, that was until 9.40pm GMT Dec 10th. I tried to download some free app (I forget which one it was now), and as usual was asked for my iTunes username and password. Then, *boom* – No juice. I got an error many others are now experiencing, which looks something like this:

“The Apple ID you entered couldn’t be found or your password was incorrect. Please try again.”

This thread at Apple discussions as well as my thread started a couple of hours ago at Mac Rumors, shows just how wide-spread this issue is becoming, and if your account hasn’t froze you out yet – your damn lucky – and you can definitely expect it to, in the very near future.

“Yes, my wife has had an issue with her iTunes account for past several weeks and Apple has not been able to resolve it yet. It started about three weeks ago with her being able to login, but unable to purchase songs. Something about her account being disabled. But when we logged in with her account and looked at her account information everything was correct including her credit card information.

We wrote an email to AppleCare for the issue (as was suggested in the error message she received) and the response back was that Apple could not find an iTunes account that matched the information we gave them. What’s interesting is the information we gave them came directly off her account information page on iTunes. Now this week she cannot even log into iTunes and she receives the same message as you:

‘The Apple ID you entered couldn’t be found or your password was incorrect. Please try again.’

This has to be an issue with the iTunes store somehow. I wouldn’t be surprised if more people report the same issue. If we can’t get it figured out with Apple over the next week I guess she will just have to create a new iTunes account.”

An e-mail I received from an Apple representative confirmed the issue was deemed temporary, and iTunes accounts would be back up and running as normal ‘shortly’:

“After some further investigation, it appears that this issue is being caused by a temporary issue that should be resolved shortly. Please try again later. Everything should be working well then.”

From product authorisation failing, to account log-ins that have compeltely froze users out, Apple are in deep trouble right about now. Are any of you out there experiencing this behavior?