Apple takes its online store offline ahead of iPhone 11 announcement

What you need to know

Apple has taken its store offline ahead of its iPhone 11 event.
Apple normally takes the store offline for big product announcements.
Apple is expected to announce new iPhones and a new Apple Watch.

It's pretty standard fare for big product announcements and Apple has once again taken its online store offline prior to the iPhone event today.

Whether a marketing strategy or a technical requirement, Apple takes its store offline when new products are set to be added. With the iPhone event taking place at 10:00 Pacific Time we shouldn't have to wait too long before it's back up.

Apple is widely expected to announce three new iPhones, although the naming convention is still a little fuzzy. Regardless of name, there will be a 6.1-inch LCD model to replace the iPhone XR, with new 5.7-inch and 6.5-inch OLED models replacing the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max respectively.

It's believed that the Apple Watch Series 5 will also be shown off for the first time, and new bands are also very likely to accompany it. There's a chance we will also see the announcement of Apple's Tile-like tagging and tracking system, too.

You can watch Apple's iPhone event via a multitude of streaming options regardless of the device you have to hand. We'll also be reporting up a storm should you not be able to follow along live as well.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.