I'm happy to report that after weeding through threads on the Apple Forum I found a simple solution to my issue. Again, what I see is that I hit "update" on an app. For a split-second the progress bar appears on the app icon and the Internet activity "wheel" spins at the top and then the bar disappears and the app does not update with the Internet activity "wheel" gone. If I want to update using iTunes on the PC, I get the 11111 unknown error.

One user on the Apple forum suggested just hitting update all over and over again on the iPad and after about 20 tries it finally did start updating all apps. Very odd but it worked. Clearly an issue on Apple's side and I guess they will eventually resolve it.

So if you have the same symptoms as mine (different from what the OP experienced though), just keep hitting update all for a while and eventually it might work. Good luck!

Everything is back to normal again for me. Some issue with the app store I'm sure that needed resolving.

Sometimes, it just doesn't work.