You're being downvoted, but I agree.

This reminds me of the system level UIAlertView's that used to pop up regarding iCloud, at seemingly random times.

I'm glad Apple re-worked that flow, but it sounds like several types of (previously) rarely occurring errors trigger similar behavior.

Agreed. Nobody in my office is having issues, but I know one guy whose cowork space is full of pop-ups on their computers, complaining over and over again about not being able to access iTunes or something -- when they're not actively trying to use any service. I'm guessing maybe that cowork space NATs out as the same IP which is why all workers in one office would have issues but I haven't heard of these issues in my own office or other friends' workplaces.

Hopefully this fiasco teaches them a little about being less obtrusive with such messages. In the past, it likely could be chalked up to a user misconfiguration, so they can blame a PEBKAC issue and push it on the user. When the failure is on Apple's end, and it affects many users at once, they'll hear pretty loud and clear that these need to go away.

> At what point does the OS need to get out of the way and stop trying to earn money but just let the user use it?

~45 online services, and most of them are free. Extra cloud storage and third party content are the only things you pay for.

may be complete coincidence, but about 8-9hrs ago my friend's iphone started acting up; emails vanishing while they were reading them, sub-routes in apps silently failing back to main screen...

even if this is unrelated - disconcerting to hear that the unit's usability is so closely tied to online services