Show the Apple Store status on your site
As the whole Mac community knows, when Apple Store goes down for maintenance, there is a good chance that Apple is about to release something new or update an existing product.
To spare you the trouble of constantly keeping an eye on the Apple Store, we here at Pingdom have set up monitoring of the US Apple Store status, and also created a small banner that will show its current status.
So, how do you put this on a web page? It couldn’t be easier. Just cut and paste this code:
120×120 pixels:
<iframe src="http://applestorestatus.pingdom.com/?id=1" name="applestatus120" width="120" height="120" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no">
<h1 style="font: 14px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Apple Store Status</h1>
<p style="font: 11px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">View Pingdom's <a href="http://applestorestatus.pingdom.com/">Apple Store Status</a>.</p>
</iframe>
160×160 pixels:
<iframe src="http://applestorestatus.pingdom.com/?id=2" name="applestatus160" width="160" height="160" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no">
<h1 style="font: 14px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Apple Store Status</h1>
<p style="font: 11px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">View Pingdom's <a href="http:// applestorestatus.pingdom.com/">Apple Store Status</a>.</p>
</iframe>
And presto, you will have an always up-to-date icon displaying the Apple Store status.
Just in case you are wondering how often Apple actually does something like this, here are the most recent US Apple Store downtimes:
| Date | Downtime | Products released |
|---|---|---|
| January 15, 2008 | 4h 35m | Macbook Air, Time Capsule etc |
| January 22, 2008 | 2h 25m | Pink iPod Nano |
| February 05, 2008 | 2h 15m | iPhone and iPod touch changes |
| February 06, 2008 | 10m | |
| February 08, 2008 | 15m | |
| February 12, 2008 | 2h 15m | Aperture 2 |
| February 19, 2008 | 1h 56m | Xsan 2, iPod Shuffle changes |
As you can see, there is a clear correspondence between when the Apple Store is taken down and when a product is released or updated. For the monitored time so far (since January 9), all longer downtimes correspond to a product release (they most likely want to give some time for the word to spread).
The banner is linked to this public report page so you can view the downtime history.
We hope you like it! Our Mac enthusiast number one (Pingdom’s web designer, wouldn’t you know?) loves this, so hopefully you will too.
A note on the monitoring: We check that the main web page of the US Apple Store answers and doesn’t return an error. We also check for a special text string on the page that is not shown on their maintenance page. We test the page once per minute and the status on the banner is also updated every minute.
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rishi
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:58 am
Hi
I was wondering if there is a way to get this widget into my iGoogle homepage. Thanks!
David
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Rishi, I believe you can do this using a iGoogle gadget that let’s you include websites like this one: http://www.bolinfest.com/changeblog/2007/05/03/your-page-here-an-igoogle-gadget/
After you added the gadget you have to edit it by clicking the down arrow and changing the height and put in the status URL: http://applestorestatus.pingdom.com/?id=2
J. Abood
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:08 pm
do you have one for myspace?
i want to put it on my myspace..
Marcelebrate
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:13 pm
I mentioned this over on MacNN…would be cool if you cached the HTML on each check, then when the site comes back up you can compare and quickly see what changed. Depending on the degree of layout changes, this could work pretty well, or?
cam
February 23rd, 2008 at 4:57 am
Is there any UK alternative???
Regards,
Cam
wwwchrisde
February 23rd, 2008 at 9:44 am
Finally someone who turned my wishes true. I posted my wish for this gimmick some weeks ago on the macrumors.com forum and I’m glad someone made it reality.
Thanks from the MBPTUWA (Macbook Pro Tuesday Update Watch Addicts)
Chris
don synstelien
February 24th, 2008 at 8:06 am
you should consider building one with Springwidgets.com – It would work on more sites and be a lot easier to add to pages like myspace and igoogle.
-Don
Nick
February 25th, 2008 at 7:59 am
Great little idea, I’ve put it on my Apple blog and also bookmarked your site
Ed
February 26th, 2008 at 6:16 am
This doesn’t appear to be working.
The Apple Store is down as I type, however the banner still shows it as up.
Ed
February 26th, 2008 at 6:19 am
Strike that, it’s now updated itself. I must have been quicker off the mark than I thought.
cam
March 7th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Any UK alternative????
Regards,
Cam