Apple Store Down - Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2011 [Updated]

Apple’s web-based store is down for maintenance, a move that always piques our curiosity as to what could possibly be up next from Cupertino.

As it generally occurs, Apple’s online store is the primary ‘official’ indicator that new or updated products are about to be introduced.

However, ‘generally’ doesn’t mean ‘always’.

So while we wouldn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up for nothing, it’s also necessary to report that there’s a chance Apple has prepared some goodies for its customers, if only just price cuts for existing products, or new accessories.

This time around, though, we have little reason to expect anything.

Apple has refreshed pretty much the entire Macintosh line with Thunderbolt and Sandy Bridge upgrades from Intel and it won’t be until later this year, if not next year, that the company’s computers will be due for another revamp.

Now, I’ve been very careful with the wording in the news piece.

Just as “generally” doesn’t mean “always”, “pretty much” doesn’t mean “all”.

In this respect, yes, there IS one Macintosh that’s still due for a refresh, and we might see it emerge today - the powerful Mac Pro workstation.

In fact, the Mac Pro is overdue for a refresh, and rumor has it that Apple is not only beefing it up internally, but also that it’s giving it a complete overhaul, switching from the current tower-shaped form factor to a rack-mountable design.

The rumor mostly supports theories that Apple’s discontinuation of the Xserve did not spell end-of-line for the Mac maker’s interest in professional, enterprise-grade server offerings.

While the current Mac Pro Server and Mac mini Server computers do their bit in the business environment, large businesses still need to rely on even more powerful, more server-centric solutions.

Of course, this wouldn’t be the first time Apple took down its online shopping venue for maintenance resulting in zero changes to its virtual shelves.

So, as I noted above, don’t get your hopes up too much if everything comes back to normal exactly as it was before.

For all we know, the site may be experiencing backend issues.

Update: It appears that the Apple store was down due to a larger problem with the web.