Apple TV faces major outage during ‘Pluribus’ premiere launch

Apple TV users across North America were left frustrated after the popular streaming service went down, right after the platform premiered Pluribus, its highly hyped new thriller from the creator of Breaking Bad.

Viewers across the United States and Canada began reporting crashes around 10:30pm ET, just minutes after the first two episodes dropped.

According to Downdetector, a site that tracks online outages, nearly 13,000 users reported that the app froze, failed to load episodes, or kicked them out mid-stream.

However, about an hour later, Apple updated its system status page, acknowledging the problem, confirming disruptions not only to Apple TV+ but also to Apple Music and Apple Arcade.

The Cupertino-based tech giant marked the issue as resolved roughly 90 minutes after reports first spiked, but the damage to its big premiere event was already done.

The timing couldn’t have been worse. Apple has positioned Pluribus as one of its flagship original releases of the year, expecting it to attract new subscribers in an increasingly competitive streaming market dominated by Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney’s Hulu.

On the sidelines, Apple’s services division, which includes Apple TV+, iCloud, Music, and Arcade, hit a record $28.8 billion in revenue last quarter.