Update: The Australian website has removed the June 27th date, and an Apple spokesperson told CNet that they’re on track for July 11th.
It’s a well known fact that Apple likes to keep each and every one of its moves, no matter how minor and insignificant they are, under wraps until Steve Jobs decides that it’s time to yank off the covers. The American Apple website, online store, iTunes store and retail stores, being under Jobs’s tightfisted control, stringently follow this policy as well.
Their international counterparts, on the other hand, slip up occasionally and reveal information that they aren’t supposed to. We’ve had the leaks from the Swiss Apple Store about an AirPort Express upgrade and from the Dutch iTunes Store about an imminent price drop for the iPod touch. Both of those leaks turned out to be genuine.
The App Store, initially, was scheduled to be released in late June, when Apple announced it during the iPhone Software Roadmap event on March 6. Then, during WWDC, all third party developers alluded to it as “coming soon” and, towards the end of the event, Steve Jobs announced that it would appear in early July.
Quite a lot of confusion, eh? Playing spoilsport to Apple’s grand plans of perpetually keeping us in the dark is the Australian Apple website, which seems to have revealed, inadvertently perhaps, that the App Store will be available on June 27 (along with the software v2.0, we assume). It’s on the iPod touch features page but we’re pretty sure it will apply for the iPhone as well.
Late June and early July doesn’t really make much of a difference but it’s nice that we have a definite date to look forward to now, instead of a vague timeframe that can be interpreted quite loosely. We sure are glad that we’ll be able to lay our hands on it sooner rather than later.
Just to serve as a reminder, the iPhone/iPod touch software v2.0, along with the App Store, will be a free update for iPhone users and a $9.99 value for the ones with an iPod touch (down from the $19.99 price of the last such update).
[Via TUAW]
