MacBook Air with Backlit Keyboard, 256GB SSD Coming Next Week - Report

The new MacBook Airs everyone is waiting to emerge are not coming this week, but the next, according to a person privy of Apple’s plans with the Macintosh lineup. “The rumor sites are off by a week,” this insider said, according to All Things D. The source confirmed that, although rumors of new MBAs arriving this week were false, the rest of the details pertaining to the hardware upgrade were accurate. In other words, Apple’s new MacBook Airs are launching next week with new Sandy Bridge processors from Intel, support for the new high-speed Thunderbolt port (also from Intel), backlit keyboards, and new storage configurations that start at 128GB (as opposed to the current minimum of 64GB) and 256GB of flash storage. Pricing should remain in place, if not get dropped, as some rumors suggest. That’s all from this source, but it appears that Apple is not stopping at the MacBook Air with this month’s Macintosh upgrade plans. The company headquartered at 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, California is believed to plan the release of several new computers, including an upgraded White MacBook, new Mac minis, and a new version of the Mac Pro with a rack-mountable form factor to replace the recently-discontinued Xserve. All Macs will come pre-installed with the latest Mac OS iteration - OS X 10.7 Lion - that much we can be sure of. However, if these claims peg out, then claims of OS X Lion launching to the public on July 26th should be false. By now, the Apple community should be quite fed up with all these inconsistent rumors, which is why we’re eagerly waiting for Apple to make its first move. Whether it’s launching new hardware or the new OS, all eyes are on the Mac maker now.

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