Apple’s Developer Portal Still Down, No Word On When it Will Come Back Up

We reported earlier this week about a security breach that took place on Apple’s developer portal last Thursday, which the company responded to immediately. Based on the light information we were given, it was difficult to take a guess as to when its services would be back online, but as the bulk of it remains down even today, it’s clear that the company wasn’t joking about its plans to overhaul both the database and service security as a whole.

As unfortunate a hassle as this is for Apple, it’s far worse for the developers that rely on it. This service is the heart of Apple’s developer relations; it’s where people go to manage their apps and licenses, discuss things with others, access various resources and so forth. With the service down, the work of some developers has hit a brick wall.

CNET reports on one such developer, Max Wheeler, who was forced to borrow his son’s iPhone (a hand-me-down, which was developer-enabled), just in order to get some testing done. Had he not had that option, he admits that his company would have been “dead in the water.“

Because some developer services are going to come back online before others, Apple has launched a special page that tells you what’s online, and what isn’t. As of the time of writing, iTunes Connect and Bug Reporter are the only two services currently online, so suffice to say, we have a ways to go before the rest follow-suit. And for some developers (and not to mention Apple itself), that moment can’t come too soon.

Will this upset affect developer thinking regarding competitor platforms? If anything, it might make some who are iOS-exclusive to consider branching out, but anyone reasonable is going to realize that the chance of a breach like this happening isn’t unique to Apple.