iMessage had an outage, but now it's back

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On Thursday evening, many iPhone owners (including some here at The Verge) saw the "not delivered" flag when trying to send texts via iMessage. People reported the problem across multiple wireless carriers (Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile), countries, and even continents.

The Apple services status page didn't show any indication of trouble while the problems were going on, but now it has been updated after the fact, reflecting a resolved issue where "Users were unable to use this service" for iMessage, Apple Messages for Business, FaceTime, and HomeKit. According to the note, the problems went on from about 5:39PM ET until 6:35PM ET.

Screenshot: Apple.com

Apple has not responded to inquiries or otherwise commented on the issue; however, judging by our use and reports on social media, everything seems to be up and running again. However, if your international friends are still saying, "Just use WhatsApp!" there isn't really anything we can do about that.

Update, May 16th: Noted the issue appears to be resolved.