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"Experiencing outages" Kind of a weasely way to say "are down," or "are having problems," or "are not working." Like the outage is some kind of external thing

"Experiencing outages" Kind of a weasely way to say "are down," or "are having problems," or "are not working." Like the outage is some kind of external thing. Hey we were just sitting here minding our own business and a random outage came by and jumped into our system.

existencebox 9y ago
At the risk of a more glib comment than I usually try to make: Having had my systems variously backhoed, struck by lightning, physically unplugged (backup and primary) by a sysadmin (cough who may have on another occasion been me not properly counting the rack I was on cough), and left without mains power for multiple weeks after an electrical fire in a substation, an outage is indeed something that can sneak up on you despite best intentions. (yes yes "distribute" "build for failure" "it's apple we should expect more" are all valid answers, but wanted to make a tongue in cheek response to your wording.)
- ams6110 9y ago
  Of course you are right. But it just comes off as a passive voice, dismissive, "not our fault, sorry" kind of way to phrase it.
eridius 9y ago
I disagree. "Experiencing outages" means something more than any of the other phrases you used. It's also more professional. "are down" doesn't tell you whether it's intentional or not (whereas "outages" is a word that people don't use for expected downtime). "are having problems" and "are not working" don't even tell you anything about the symptoms. But "experiencing outages" means the service is partially or completely interrupted, and that it wasn't expected downtime.
- sitkack 9y ago
  An affluent store near me has a sign that reads, "please allow us to serve you at a different teller", it could also say, "Closed".
stordoff 9y ago
Arguably the other phrases overcommit though - Are they down? Are they up but giving bad data/intermittent? Are they up but there is a problem between the server and user? Are they up in some regions but down in others? are all covered by experiencing outages, but "are down"/"are not working" are more definitive, both in that the service is definitely not working and that the problem is definitely on Apple's end. "Are down" can also suggest that the downtime was deliberate.

existencebox 9y ago

At the risk of a more glib comment than I usually try to make: Having had my systems variously backhoed, struck by lightning, physically unplugged (backup and primary) by a sysadmin (cough who may have on another occasion been me not properly counting the rack I was on cough), and left without mains power for multiple weeks after an electrical fire in a substation, an outage is indeed something that can sneak up on you despite best intentions. (yes yes "distribute" "build for failure" "it's apple we should expect more" are all valid answers, but wanted to make a tongue in cheek response to your wording.)

ams6110 9y ago
Of course you are right. But it just comes off as a passive voice, dismissive, "not our fault, sorry" kind of way to phrase it.

eridius 9y ago

I disagree. "Experiencing outages" means something more than any of the other phrases you used. It's also more professional. "are down" doesn't tell you whether it's intentional or not (whereas "outages" is a word that people don't use for expected downtime). "are having problems" and "are not working" don't even tell you anything about the symptoms. But "experiencing outages" means the service is partially or completely interrupted, and that it wasn't expected downtime.

sitkack 9y ago
An affluent store near me has a sign that reads, "please allow us to serve you at a different teller", it could also say, "Closed".

stordoff 9y ago

Arguably the other phrases overcommit though - Are they down? Are they up but giving bad data/intermittent? Are they up but there is a problem between the server and user? Are they up in some regions but down in others? are all covered by experiencing outages, but "are down"/"are not working" are more definitive, both in that the service is definitely not working and that the problem is definitely on Apple's end. "Are down" can also suggest that the downtime was deliberate.