2-Factor gone haywire?

I have activated 2-Factor Authentication awhile ago. Sometime after reading the article about Mat Honan getting hacked.

It played nicely and I didn't have any problems.

Yesterday I suddenly got a message that I had to create a new appleid password since there were too many attempts on my id. Awkward since I hadn't entered it for a few days. Well, I went about that process and things got messy. I ended up creating a new password, updating that on several devices, only to get forced to create yet a new one since I forgot about app-specific passwords. What an awful loop to get caught up in.

Now I basically got things figured out, but I can't connect some apps to iCloud. I am stuck on Contacts. It won't accept any app-specific passwords. It won't accept my appleid password. I am sweating every time I enter a password that I am going to get forced to choose yet another password. I am running out of creativity (I do use 1Password though).

Anyone know if 2FA is not working properly right now?

I did read the recent post linking to an article about 2FA.

I personally have avoided the Apple 2FA simply because it's flawed and cumbersome to use. As you found out, when something goes wrong you can easily be locked out of your devices or apps and getting things straight again can be a nightmare. You might have to contact Apple directly about your Apple ID password to make sure that it's been set correctly. You shouldn't have to change it that many times.