Apple Store goes down ahead of today’s ‘Time Flies’ event

UPDATE: The Apple Event brought us a bunch of exciting product announcements. Check them out:

• The Apple Watch Series 6 and Apple Watch SE are official
• Apple announces new and improved iPad, iPad Air
• Apple One subscription bundles Apple services in a single package

Less than 10 minutes after Tim Cook published his customary ‘Good morning!’ Tweet and with under six hours to go until the ‘Time Flies’ event kicks off, the online Apple Store has gone down.

Apple takes down its entire online store before each hardware event in preparation for the arrival of new products. This happens regardless of which products and the number of devices being announced on the day. 

Today, Apple is expected to focus on the Apple Watch and iPad lineups. The former will receive a refresh in the form of the Apple Watch Series 6, which should incorporate a blood oxygen sensor and a faster chipset. 

An affordable ‘Apple Watch SE’ is on the way too. It should offer many of the same features seen on the Apple Watch Series 5, including the newer design, but for a lower price of $279 that’ll allow it to slot in between the $199 Watch Series 3 and $399 Watch Series 6. 

On the iPad front, Apple will lead the way with the iPad Air 4. This product looks set to offer an iPad Pro-like design that uses a side-mounted fingerprint scanner rather than Face ID and the next-gen A14 chipset. 

Last-minute reports suggest an entry-level iPad (8th-gen) is coming later as well, although this one will be powered by the same A12X Bionic found in the iPad Pro (2018). If true, that’ll represent a massive upgrade over the A10 Fusion that’s used inside the current iPad 7th-gen.