New users of Apple Watch and HomePod are facing iCloud Activation issues

New Users of Apple Watch and HomePod are facing activation issues according to a report. The issue seems to be on the server-side as iCloud is probably receiving a lot of traffic on the occasion of Christmas.

First reported by Macrumors, users are reporting “Verification Failed” on their new devices be it Apple Watch/HomePod. One of the users says the Apple Watch SE that they purchased isn’t going past the iCloud sign-in process. Despite starting the pairing process using an iPhone, the verification fails multiple times.

To this, Apple reportedly shows a solution of resetting the encrypted data. This would normally delete old passwords and data which isn’t the advisable thing to do. Another user also reports that his HomePod is stuck in the “configuration” stage after multiple attempts. None of the solutions like removing it from iCloud seems to work.

All this points to an iCloud Account and Sign-in Issue on the server-side of Apple. We personally checked on Apple’s support page to see the status of the issue. And to our surprise, the issue still seems to be live(at the time of writing this) as you can see above. On clicking the status card, we get a message that the issue is “ongoing” since Dec 25, 3:15 PM PST.

We can only imagine the frustration of not being able to use a new product despite having it in hand. Besides, this is not the only issue Apple Watch SE users faced. A previous report said users of South Korea experienced wrist burn due to overheating.

In any case, we hope that Apple fixes the iCloud issue soon so that people can use their gifts/purchases at least for New Year’s eve.