Update: March 11, 1:25 p.m. ET: Apple has responded to the outage, apologizing to customers for the nearly 8.5 hours of downtime. It says the problem was caused by "an internal DNS error at Apple" and that a fix is on its way.
A DNS problem makes sense, especially in the context of how this outage has affected users. Some regions or ISPs are impacted whereas others are not, which is likely based on various DNS TTL (time to live) policies. Because of the nature of DNS and the various caching services Apple uses, fixing this sort of error could take time to make its way to users across the globe.
BREAKING: Apple apologizes to users for outage that took down iTunes & other services. http://t.co/61NJWHH7pY pic.twitter.com/yZGQCRudYl— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) March 11, 2015
If you're having a hard time accessing various Apple services, including iTunes and the App Store, you're not alone.
As first reported by The Next Web, Apple is suffering intermittent outages for its iTunes, iTunes Connect and App Store services.
Some users may also have trouble logging into iCloud accounts. Apple did not immediately reply to a request for comment, but the company's system status webpage shows that the iTunes Store is "unavailable for all users."
This prevents users from downloading app updates, purchasing applications and music, and from playing iTunes Radio or iTunes Match/iTunes in the Cloud items.
The status page also indicates that slightly before 5 a.m. ET until just before 9 a.m. ET, Apple's iCloud sign-in and iCloud mail services were down for all users.
One Twitter user also said that an Apple Store in Edinburgh had problems with its systems, too.
@brokenbottleboy Was in the Apple Store Edinburgh 10am & they were having to use paper&pen. Their systems did come back after 15m - related?— I, YermoungDer (@yermoungder) March 11, 2015
Although users from several countries have reported issues, the problems also appear to be sporadic in nature, with some experiencing issues while others have no problems at all.