UPDATE, 4:56 PM ET:

The affected areas are back online, according to Apple's status page.

Apple has responded to our request for comment with the following statement:"We apologize to our customers experiencing problems with iTunes and other services this morning. The cause was an internal DNS error at Apple. We’re working to make all of the services available to customers as soon as possible, and we thank everyone for their patience."

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Several of Apple's services, including iTunes and its App store, have been down for nearly 7 hours, with reports of outages first coming in at 5 a.m. ET this morning.On Apple's status page , the App store, iTunes, iBooks, and the Mac App store are all listed as "unavailable for all users." According to a report on ZDNet, Apple is losing around $2.2 million USD every hour the sites are down.Earlier in the morning, Apple cloud services were also affected. According to the Apple support page, iCloud Mail and iCloud sign-in and account and sign-in functionality were down until just before 9 a.m. ET.Recently Apple held a special live event to show off not only its Apple Watch , but also to introduce its lightest MacBook ever , among other announcements. It also revealed a partnership with HBO for the launch of HBO's new standalone streaming app, HBO NOW, which is slated for release in April.The Apple and HBO deal is a timed exclusive that gives Apple exclusive digital distribution rights to the new HBO NOW app for three months. That means that the app itself can only be acquired through an Apple product accessing the App store.We've reached out to Apple for comment on just what's going on with this costly outage, and we'll be sure to update this story with its reply.

Seth Macy is a freelance writer who just wants to be your friend. Follow him on Twitter @sethmacy , and MyIGN at sethgmacy , or check out Seth Macy Photography on Flickr.