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islanders

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 21, 2006
272
0
Charleston, SC
1) With Best Buy no longer shipping MBA to retail stores an update is immanent.

2) Apple site claims Lion in July.

3) MBA is on 4 of the 7 Apple site Lion promotion images:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/

I thought Macbook would be refreshed sooner but:

Looking more and more like July 5th (Tuesday) for both MBA and Lion.
 
Doubt it. More towards the end of July. The latest release of Lion has many bugs. I'm thinking one more release of Lion. That's why my guess is end of July.
 
Are you sure? That's quite a dilemma. What will they do not stock the Airs so the refresh ships with Lion?

There are no instruction videos for the gestures yet and Apple usually notes if the build is considered as Golden Master. It will also take at least a week or two after the GM before the actual release will happen, especially if it must be pre-installed in MBAs. Of course, maybe MBAs will come with SL instead, nobody knows for sure.
 
I would rather not have Lion installed. Sort out the bugs first then upgrade.

Still, no Airs in inventory at Best Buy warehouse is good reason to release them sooner than later.

Thanks for the info.. this will be fun when it happens. :p
 
My guess is July 19th, gives them enough time to work out the kinks in lion, plus install lion on the new MBA's. Also its a Tuesday, which they seem to like.
 
As long as I can pre-order one on July 5th. I don't care when they ship it!:mad:

Apple doesn't do pre-orders. If you order an MBA on July 5 you're not guaranteed to get the Sb model. Apple hasn't even announced a new MBA, and they don't take orders for un-announced products.

When they do announce a new product it's available for order (and often in the stores) on the day it's announced.
 
I think Tuesday the 12th is a good guess. With Bestbuy and Amazon starting to show signs of being depleted of supply, a 2 week estimate sounds about right. The Lion GM will likely come out this or next week, lining things up somewhat nicely. Of course, it's all speculation right now, but I sat around and waited for the MBP refresh, and it was roughly 2 weeks from the time of Bestbuy and Amazon showing signs of a refresh that the refresh actually happened.
 
I think Tuesday the 12th is a good guess. With Bestbuy and Amazon starting to show signs of being depleted of supply, a 2 week estimate sounds about right. The Lion GM will likely come out this or next week, lining things up somewhat nicely. Of course, it's all speculation right now, but I sat around and waited for the MBP refresh, and it was roughly 2 weeks from the time of Bestbuy and Amazon showing signs of a refresh that the refresh actually happened.
That 2-week guess is interesting, especially backed up by what previously happened with MBPs.

However, regarding Lion: I imagine the Airs are already packaged in their box. How are they going to install the final Lion release right before shipping to (r)etailers?
 
That 2-week guess is interesting, especially backed up by what previously happened with MBPs.

However, regarding Lion: I imagine the Airs are already packaged in their box. How are they going to install the final Lion release right before shipping to (r)etailers?

They probably arent in their boxes. They are probably sitting in controlled batches fully assembled, waiting for a quick OS image to be put on and then packaged. You can do that within ~ week if you have a operation like Apple. That still only leaves a week for a golden master copy though.
 
If I went into an Apple store today, and bought an Air - what version of the OS is on the USB stick?

10.6.6?

It would seem to make sense to me that when the new Airs are released, Lion is pre-installed on both the computers and on the USB stick. I don't think they will release MacBook Airs with an OS that is going to be updated less than 2 weeks later.
 
Or they ship the MBA with 10.6.8 on it with free upgrade to 10.7 - that sits with the "Download only" Lion model.


Apple already said they were shipping the MBA with Lion. July 5th is way too early. Mid-July at the earliest, but at the rate its going I'd say first week of August. Been waiting forever and will probably be disappointed since the upgrade will probably be just SB and nothing else.:mad:
 
just a quick question:
what does this have to do with the release date?

The reasoning was that Airs would be released with Lion as it's their primary promotional platform. Thus they would both be released together in July.

This is the last Tuesday in June and so far no MBA. I guess we will see.

At least making a estimated guess got some others in the know to offer their insights.

Now it looks like MBA refresh:

July 5th would be the earliest and unlikely that Lion Gold is ready so it would ship with a sticker on the box "free Lion upgrade" so that shelfs won't be empty.

July 12th earliest to have both new MBA and Lion.
 
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