iMessage, FaceTime Down: Apple Acknowledges Sunday's iCloud Outage, Restores Both Services

Many on Sunday were wondering whether or not Apple's servers for iMessage and FaceTime were working, and, as a result, iOS users poured onto Twitter to express their frustration that their favorite Apple messaging services weren't working properly.

As it turns out, users weren't just imagining things: The iCloud outage was widespread on Sunday and affected many of Apple's most-used services.

Apple formally acknowledged the issues with iMessage and FaceTime on the company's iCloud status page. Apple says users were "unable to use iMessage," "may have been unable to place FaceTime calls" and "may have been unable to complete storage upgrade payment transactions."

The outage occurred at about 6 p.m. Eastern, 3 p.m. Pacific, on Sunday but did not last very long: Apple's iCloud page says services were restored roughly 90 minutes later.

"All services are online," Apple wrote on its iCloud page at 5:41 p.m. EST.

iCloud outages are rare but do occur, as computer servers aren't infallible.

In the future, if your iMessages won't send, FaceTime won't connect or you can't back up your iPhone or iPad information to iCloud, be sure to check out Apple's always-up-to-date iCloud status page to see if it's a widespread problem or a specific issue with your iOS device. If others aren't experiencing your problem, Apple recommends you power down your iPhone, iPad or iPad, wait one minute, then turn on the device one minute later. This usually fixes any network configuration issues, particularly with connecting to the Internet or iCloud.