Looks like nothing came out of it. At least as far as I can tell. The MacBooks which are the most likely thing to receive a silent update push are unchanged as far as I can tell.
Not for me. The site is up; the store is closed ("we're busy updating the Apple Store")
I think they have the money to pay for a second server park and seamlessly switch to it, and it isn't that hard, technically, so I assume they do things this way for other reasons (marketing, but maybe also because they do not want customers to have the experience of 'if I had logged in a second later, I would have seen the new product/the lower price on the old product")
