Jess Weatherbed, The Verge:

A major Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage took down multiple online services for around four hours this morning, including Amazon, Alexa, Snapchat, Fortnite, ChatGPT, Epic Games Store, Epic Online Services, and more.

As of 6:35AM ET, the AWS status checker is reporting that “most AWS Service operations are succeeding normally now,” and some of the impacted platforms, including Fortnite, Epic Games Store, and Perplexity have announced that they are fully recovered and back online.

However, as of 9:50AM ET, Amazon says that multiple services in the US-EAST-1 Region are still “impacted” by operational issues, and that it is working towards a full resolution. The AWS dashboard first reported issues affecting the US-EAST-1 Region at 3:11AM ET, with global services in other regions also taken offline. The cause of the outage hasn’t been confirmed, and it’s unclear when regular service will be fully restored.

I bet it was this AWS outage that explains why I couldn’t sign in to my NYT account to play Wordle this morning. (Got it in 4 today.)

Update: Amazon claims the issues were resolved at the end of the day. I still couldn’t order food for delivery from a few local restaurants, including any that depended on Doordash or Toast, at 7pm ET though.

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A few readers took exception to this bit from my post Wednesday regarding the new M5 MacBook Pro:

The base 14-inch model, with the no-adjective M-series chip, is for people who probably would be better served with a MacBook Air but who wrongly believe they “need” a laptop with “Pro” in its name.

E.g., Brian Stucki, who wrote on Bluesky:

A rare disagree with @gruber.foo here. I’m a cognizant MacBook Pro no-adjective user because the CPU/GPU is more than enough for me. I buy over Air for

• XDR display
• Battery life
• much better speakers
• SD/HDMI ports

I’m glad to have the option without an adjective markup.

The main link on this post is to Apple’s ever-excellent Compare page for MacBooks, comparing the $1,000 M4 MacBook Air to the new $1,600 M5 MacBook Pro and, because there’s a third slot, the $2,000 M4 MacBook Pro with the M4 Pro chip. Stucki’s short list nails the actual advantages of the base MacBook Pro compared to the MacBook Air: much better display (1,000 nits vs. 500 nits, with the MBP supporting up to 1,600 nits for HDR content), better speakers, longer battery life, and SD/HDMI ports. Unmentioned by Stucki is that only the MacBook Pro offers the option for a nano-texture matte display for $150.

In my defense, I did say “probably” in my post. My understanding is that the base MacBook Pro is a huge seller for Apple. So of course some very well-informed users are buying them for good reasons. But I really do think an awful lot of base MacBook Pro buyers are spending an extra $600 and carrying 0.7 pounds of extra weight for features they don’t actually notice or care about. They just think they need a “pro” laptop, and underestimate just how incredibly capable MacBook Airs are.

I’m not really into commemorative coins, and I have to say I suspect Steve Jobs wasn’t either, but it’s a nice little recognition. No mention of it from the Mint, but the $1 value of the coin is the same as the salary Jobs drew from Apple.

Speaking of Eddy Cue, he was the guest on Matthew Belloni’s excellent podcast, The Town, this week. (Overcast link.) Just a great interview in general. Cue doesn’t do many interviews but he’s my favorite Apple executive to hear speak, because he’s the least rehearsed and most straightforward. If he doesn’t want to answer a question (Belloni tried, mightily, to press him on subscriber and viewership numbers), Cue just says he’s not going to answer that question, rather than dance around it with a non-answer answer.

My two big takeaways:

• Everyone in Hollywood is spooked about what Apple’s intentions “really are” regarding original movies and series. They’re worried it’s some sort of play to polish Apple’s brand, and that Apple is going to get bored or tired of losing money, and pick up stakes and leave the game. Cue emphasized that the answer is simple: Apple thinks it’s a great business to be in (and he also made the point that Apple’s brand needed no polishing) and they’re in this business for that reason, and for the long haul.

• Apple is serious about sports rights, but they don’t want to dabble. They want to own the rights to entire sports. Friday Night Baseball was, effectively, a learning experiment. Apple TV’s MLS deal — and the F1 US deal announced today — are the sort of deals Apple wants. (That’s going to make it hard for Apple to get involved with the NFL, because the NFL strategically wants to spread its games across all the major TV networks and streaming services.) Cue is a huge sports fan (as is Tim Cook), and Apple wants to deliver sports on Apple TV that cater to fans.