Apple Time Capsule refresh with iCloud inside?

I mentioned yesterday that there are some shortages of Apple gear in some locations and online. The shortages were for some of the Apple Airport devices and the Time Capsule unit. Generally, a shortage of things in Apple Stores is a good indication that a refresh is imminent and with WWDC kicking off soon perhaps, the shortages mean new products being unveiled. A source has tipped 9to5Mac that the Airport Express supply is plentiful in most places, but the supply of the Time Capsule and Airport Extreme are in fact very tight globally.

9to5Mac also reports that it knows Apple is testing a Time Capsule internally that is able to cache software updates for Mac and iOS devices that connect to it via WiFi. That would be a very interesting product that would allow the user to connect to it rather than having to download directly from the internet. The Time Capsule reportedly goes out and downloads the software updates for the devices that connect to it on its own.

Then when the user initiates an update, the file would be grabbed from the Time Capsule. Another interesting possibility with iCloud expected at WWDC is that the Time Capsule could cache the most commonly used flies for the user locally to speed streaming. There is already a similar function for Mac OSX servers where the server downloads updates for Macs to speed uploads. Could this caching service be the update that is inbound and causing shortages at the moment? We should know when WWDC 2011 kicks off.

[via 9to5Mac]