The Apple store has gone offline ahead of the October Mac event, which will take place at 5 pm Pacific time.
The company is expected to unveil its new M3 chips, as well as M3 Pro and M3 Max variants, housed in various new Mac devices including a new M3 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro and an M3 iMac.
The Apple store went down approximately 30 minutes prior to the event starting.
The store not going down fully ahead of launch until right at the last minute could still indicate Apple isn't planning to make its new products immediately available for pre-order or purchase following today's announcement. For every event in recent memory, Apple's store has gone offline prior to the keynote dropping. Cynics say that this is a marketing tactic Apple uses to draw attention to its new announcements, as opposed to any practical downtime to make adjustments. Yet Apple's struggles to get its store back up and running at the iPhone 15 event suggest that it might be necessary for the company to handle big new releases, which begs the question why Apple might not have taken the store completely offline this time.
Not having products immediately could simply mean we have to wait until tomorrow, or perhaps Friday, for pre-orders. However, it could also mean next month, or maybe even 2024. Apple has revealed products in the past with long and vague lead times, most notably and recently Apple Vision Pro. With rumors that Apple might have been planning these new Mac models and chips for 2024 swirling, is it possible Apple plans to show us these new goodies long before we can get our hands on them? We don't have long to wait.
More from iMore
