If you believe the Tame Apple Press, the move is because Apple has conquered the sound market with its overpriced gear and no longer needs to offer alternatives. Another way of looking at it is that Jobs’s Mob has lowered the standards of hi-fi gear so much it does not want people comparing its products with rivals.

One rumour about the purge is that Apple is working on a new version of its HomePod speaker and its first pair of premium over-ear headphones. You had to be an Apple Fanboy to think the HomePod speaker was remotely better than a nice pair of bookshelf speakers.

However, the increase in sound gear is being more realistically being a cover for the fact that iPhone sales have been slowly slumping as the cash cow starts to die.

“As such, Apple has a big incentive to create another smash hit like AirPods by expanding its footprint in the audio space”, enthused one fanzine which has consistently tried to convince the world that the iPhone cash cow was not dying.

Changes to the Apple Store's offerings do not serve as concrete evidence that the company is indeed planning to launch new audio products of its own. But Apple did stop selling products from Fitbit in its stores in 2014 before it launched the Apple Watch and the Tame Apple Press tends to get over excited by Apple releasing new products in the vague hope that they will do something new.