.Mac users in China have been feeling a little bereft lately because of their sudden inability to access any of their .Mac hosted websites. Apparently, all HTTP access to the service has been blocked by the Great Firewall, which has been known to block other blogging and community oriented sites in the past, primary among which have been Blogspot and Wikipedia.
.Mac users can still access all the other features the service has to offer which do not require HTTP access, such as their iDisks, the synchronization features and they can even update their sites using iWeb. There’s only this tiny little matter of them not being able to actually see the site that is being updated (and viewing it offline, within iWeb, just doesn’t seem to be good enough).
According to reports, the affected areas seem to be Beijing, Hangzhou, Hunan, Shenzhen and Zhuhai. If you’re a .Mac customer and live in any of those areas, our sympathies are with you. If it’s any comfort, we still can access your swanky websites, so all’s not lost. Hopefully, someone will take notice and this will be sorted out soon. We’ll keep you posted.
[Via Ars Technica]
