Something is afoot at Apple, and I’m not quite sure what it is… yet.

For the past several years, any time Apple had a new product to announce it was accompanied by a press event that would have everyone speculating for days beforehand of what was about to happen.  However, with no warning, over the past couple of weeks there have been two product updates, all of the Mac desktops and the iPod Shuffle, with no fanfare whatsoever.  The online Apple store has closed down as it always does before no products launch, and reopened with the new items in place.

The Mac desktops is somewhat understandable in that they just received hardware upgrades and new price points, but that hasn’t stopped Apple before from holding a press event.  True, Steve Jobs, their usual pitch man and CEO, is on medical leave currently, but it still seems odd that they didn’t accompany this with more horn blowing.

It’s the iPod Shuffle that has left me scratching my head the most.  Typically the iPod lines are refreshed in September, but the Shuffle did miss out on the 2008 iPod updates.  So not only did the Shuffle launch outside of the normal release window, it sports a brand new feature in the form of audible navigation menus, something you would normally expect Apple to crow about.  Why didn’t they hold the Shuffle off until the September 2009 updates?  Was this a 2008 update that ran late?  Or is this a new indication that iPods will release whenever they are ready, no matter what time of the year?

The reason we feel any of this is even newsworthy is that it worries us some.  Every time Apple has one of their big announcements, they get more press coverage than you can shake a stick at.  Why are they skipping this benefit?  The theories in our office run from Steve Jobs being out of action to the economy is impacting the company harder than anyone knows.  Press events aren’t cheap to run, but we doubt that is the economical factor, we think it’s that they don’t want to be sitting on any inventory.  If they held the Shuffle until September, that would have been six months of money just sitting around, waiting.  Course, the Macs and Shuffle came out so close together, why not just do them both at one event?

What makes all of this seem even a bit more strange is the fact that Apple is having a press event in two days to show a preview of the OS 3.0 for the iPhone.  This isn’t even a product launch, but just a preview of software that will be free to iPhone users, and will cost a fee to iPod Touch users.  Why hold the big press event for something like this?  This alone somewhat shoots down the theory that Apple is skipping press events for money because this one will return no revenue at all.

Whatever the causes of these changes are at Apple, I think we are seeing a definite shift in their strategy regarding product launches.