Your Twitter timeline wasn’t pulling your leg on Sunday: iMessage didn’t work for an unknown number of iOS and Mac users for several hours that day. And FaceTime joined iMessage on Apple’s MIA list.
For much of Sunday afternoon, Apple’s support page confirmed that some users were unable to access iMessage or place FaceTime calls. However, around 4:30 p.m. PT, service was restored, according to a message on the support page. Apple didn’t provide a reason for the outage, which began affecting some users on Sunday morning.
Still, despite Apple’s assurance that service had been restored, some users were still reporting problems Sunday evening. A typical complaint posted to Macworld’s Twitter account cited the inability to send an iMessage from a phone number.
As of Monday morning, however, Macworld staffers who had encountered a variety of iMessage and FaceTime issues reported that those problems did indeed seem to be resolved, as Apple’s system-status page suggested they should be.
iMessage is the service underlying the Messages app for iOS 6 and Mountain Lion that lets you send text and picture messages over Wi-Fi using an iOS device or Mac. FaceTime is a video-calling feature that works over Wi-Fi on the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Mac and on cellular connections on some iOS devices.
This article was updated at 6:30 p.m. PT to note that iMessage and FaceTime service had been restored according to Apple. Updated at 9:10 p.m. PT Sunday to reflect that some users were still reporting problems with iMessage. Updated again at 6:30 a.m. PT Monday to indicate that now the iCloud-related issues really do seem to be resolved.