Will OS X Lion Ship On July 26th Along With New MacBooks, Mac Minis?

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MacBook

Contrary to rumor, OS X Lion did not launch on the Mac App Store last night. I know, I know: trust us, we’re as frustrated by it as you are. You didn’t type your fingers away to pulps of meat and shards of bone trying to get a 7,000 word Lion review done on time!

There’s still hope that Lion could be released today, in which case, the best guess is around 10am PDT. However, a growing number of people like Ars Technica’s John Siracua are saying that Lion’s not coming at all this week.

So when? If you believe Amazon and Best Buy, the tail end of July… along with new white MacBooks an Mac Minis.

According to Apple Bitch:

Major US Apple reseller Best Buy has been out of online stock of the Mac mini and the MacBook for some time now but are stating that both models will be back in stock around the 26th July. In addition, Amazon.com, while appearing to have plenty of stock of the Mac mini, are out of stock of the white MacBook and are also citing the end of July for in stock dates for the polycarbonate laptop.

The logic here is that Apple is holding back shipping new MacBook Airs, Mac Minis and white MacBooks so that they ship with Lion. Therefore, the new hardware can’t come out before Lion… and might just emerge simultaneously.

I still think there’s reason to hope for Lion to launch today, but all Apple promised was July, and there’s more than two weeks left this month.

Update: The previous headline describes OS X Lion as “M.I.A.” and a lot of readers have had some issues with that term, in that Apple has not promised any release date short of by the end of July. The headline was written from the perspective of last night’s rumor frenzy about a 1AM GMT Lion release, which I think the post makes clear. None the less, we’ve changed the headline now for clarity, and agree that the use of “M.I.A.” was not strictly accurate. We hope that this edit will put to rest any of the severe personal crises the use of the term might have inadvertently evoked in any of our readers.

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