Apple iMessage is down (update)

Apple's proprietary messaging service iMessage seems to be having some problems right now. Users in North America and Europe have been reporting that the service isn't working, but oddly iMessage only seems to be down for iOS users. At first, it looked like Mac users are not experiencing the same problems, but it turns out that the problem affects all Apple products. 

It seems that when users try to send a message via iMessage the system will hang, then either fail, or send the message via SMS if possible. No word on why this is happening, but it definitely looks like an issue on Apple's side, so nothing users can do will fix the issue. 

We'll keep watching and let you know when things get sorted out. 

**Update** At around 6:15PM EST the iMessage service was restored, and appears to be working on all platforms. Still no word on what caused the outage.