14 DAY TRIAL // Much to our surprise, Apple has taken down its online store internationally, with no rumored announcements in sight, making it fairly likely that the Cupertino technology giant is merely carrying out maintenance on its venue.
We’re almost convinced Apple is doing some backend dust wiping (after all, it's a Friday), but at the same time, we also know history has shown that 90 percent of the times Apple’s store goes offline something new is unveiled thereafter.
So, for the sake of the argument, let’s try and determine what that new thing could be.
As of late, Apple has done well to bring pretty much every portable and desktop Mac up to feature parity with the MacBook Pro line - the first to get Intel’s new Sandy Bridge CPU architecture and Thunderbolt connectivity.
In doing so, the company even discontinued one system - the white polycarbonate MacBook.
Apple’s entire range of laptops now makes one happy ‘unibody’ family whose members share the same aluminum-machined DNA.
But there’s still one system that got left behind this year, and it's not a MacBook.
As Apple fans will recall, there has been some chatter that Cupertino was going to justify the discontinuation of the Xserve with an updated range of Mac Pro workstations.
The presumably rack-mountable systems are yet to see the light of day, but rumors of this impending refresh are circulating still.
While the Mac Pro is the beast of Macintosh computers, it is also the one that likely sells the least units per quarter (albeit at a high price even for the base configuration).
Apple may have left it behind only temporarily, in order to focus on upgrading the hot-selling MacBooks, iMac, and Mac mini computers.
The Mac Pro, however, is used in numerous environments where raw processing power is of the essence - such as in post production, for example.
Chances are the Thunderbolt Mac Pro is just around the corner of that yellow sticky sign that reads "we'll be back soon."
Share your thoughts in the comments and see if they line up with Apple’s when the Apple store goes back online.
Could there be something something else hitting the store that we haven't thought about?
Update: the Apple store is back online with no visible changes. The Special Deals section, however, appears to have undergone a few price changes, but that's not necessary to take down the whole store.