Apple iTunes, App Store and other online services back after million-dollar outage

Company probably lost about $30 million sales during the day-long problems

Apple employees greet costumers on the opening of an Apple Store in Hanover, central Germany on September 27, 2014 (PETER STEFFEN/AFP/Getty Images)

The iTunes Store and the rest of Apple’s online services have finally been restored, about 12-hours after they were taken out by an internal error.

Users trying to buy media through the company’s online store were unable to do so, with other services such as the App Store also down. The problem was the result of an error in the domain name system (DNS) — the technology used to direct computers towards the right address when they click on a link.

The outage began yesterday morning, and was fixed by the evening. But Apple likely lost about $30 million during the problems — its “services” business makes an average of $56 million a day and account for more than 6 per cent of sales, according to company reports.

As well as the stores, the problem also hit online accounts like iCloud Mail and other cloud services.

The problem even broke the systems used to charge customers for purchases in Apple's real retail stores. Reports on Twitter showed staff using old fashioned carbon copy credit card machines, since the systems that power the high-tech portable card machines were also buckled.

Apple publicly apologised to users over the outage. Its shares were down 1.8 per cent, though they have been fluctuating in the wake of the announcement of the Apple Watch earlier this week.