[12:40 PM Update: Appleis .Mac support team posted the following message on the .Mac support boards once the service was back up:

We apologize for the outage from 6:30am to 9:30am pdt this morning. There was a network outage due to faulty hardware. We have restored access to the .Mac site and services. Regards, .Mac Support.

That was amended just a bit later with the following, more indepth note:

Dear .Mac Member, We hope you havenit been greatly inconvenienced by the two .Mac network outages weive experienced in the past two weeks (including this morning). They were the result of equipment failures, and since the equipment vendor has not been able to persuade us that the problem will not occur again, weive already begun installing new equipment from a different vendor. Weire completely back up and running now, and no data or mail was lost. We expect the equipment change over to be complete within the next several weeks, and weill be working hard to ensure that there are no further issues during that time. In the meantime, we appreciate your patience while we make this transition, and if you do experience any difficulties, please go to www.apple.com/support for up to the minute information and status. The .Mac team.

You can find the notes at the .Mac support boards, though you will have to be logged in to .Mac before trying to pull up the link to access it. Session time outs may also affect that link.]

[11:50 AM Update: As of this writing, it would seem that all .Mac services have been restored.]

[11:30 AM Update: The .Mac home page is accessible again. WebMail is still not responding, and .Mac IMAP accounts are also still inaccessible. Some Observers have reported getting their .Mac mail, but we have been unable to duplicate those results.]

[11:10 AM Update: Our tests show that iDisk is still fully accessible, though some users are reporting problems accessing their iDisks in the comments below. Also, a discussion on this issue has begun in the TMO forums, and we encourage you to join in on that discussion.]

We have gotten reports in from across the country that .Mac e-mail accounts, the Mac.com home page, and .Mac WebMail services are all currently not responding. The WebMail page returns only this message:

No instance available

That means the server is responding, but the software itself is not behaving. The Mac.com home page is returning a similar message of:

Gateway Timeout

The following error occurred:

Server unreachable
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please contact the administrator.

.Mac e-mail IMAP accounts are not responding, either. iDisk, accounts, however, are responding normally and are fully accessible .Mac personal sites are as inaccessible as the other services.

Apple spokespersons were not available for comment at press time. TMO will update this story when these services come back online.