Apple is a company that ploughs its own furrow in many respects, not least of which in the way it handles shopping online.

Earlier this week the transactional portion of its website was deliberately disabled by the firm, ahead of the major event it hosted to help launch the iPhone SE, its affordable handset which joins the higher end iPhone 6S and 6S Plus.

While fans might have been worried about the downtime, perhaps seeing it as a sign that Apple’s site was incapable of coping with the strain of visitors eager to find out information about its latest releases, the reality is quite different. The Independent reports that Apple takes its e-commerce site offline because it is a long established tradition, occurring ahead of all key product launches in recent years.

Originally, the site was taken down for a few hours so that Apple could add the pages and features relating to the new products that were arriving. But in 2015, a significant overhaul to the site made this kind of planned outage redundant.

In spite of the firmer foundations that Apple’s site for safe shopping online now sits on, the announcement of the iPhone SE was still preceded by a brief period of downtime. This, no doubt, helped focus yet more attention on the launch event, which also saw a new iPad Pro make an appearance.

The iPhone SE is a four inch handset which looks a lot like the ageing iPhone 5S, but comes with a cutting edge processor and camera combo, as well as compatibility with Apple Pay. So for people who want a cheaper iPhone which can still be used to carry out contactless transactions, it could be a suitable choice that does not break the bank.