Apple is planning overnight shifts at international retail locations around the world to prepare for a July 14th release of OS X Lion, according to reports. And new Thunderbolt-equipped Sandy Bridge MacBook Airs with blistering 400MBps SSD drives might also be in the cards.
9to5Mac reports:
We’ve heard from a few overseas sources that Apple Retail stores are planning ‘overnights’ on July 13th. Overnights are generally where Apple refreshes store displays and trains up management on new products. Sometimes it is big stuff and sometimes it is insignificant (at least to us).
July 13th, however, lines up with our Lion release date pretty nicely. We’re expecting the Lion release obviously, and also some new MacBook Airs which may or may not have faster storage, a Sandy Bridge CPU and Thunderbolts coming out the side.
We’ve heard some stories of backlit keyboards, 3Gs, a black option and the mythical 15-inch MacBook Air HD but they seem unlikely at this point.
Along with the Airs, there have been shortages of the White MacBooks, Mac Minis and (perhaps redesigned) Pros – everything that doesn’t currently have Thunderbolt — so those could also see updates. If not on the 14th, then perhaps shortly after.
Since Lion isn’t going to be a retail release, if the Apple Store is preparing, that means new hardware is incoming. I’d make a bet on new MacBook Airs. I’m less sure about the white MacBook: I think Apple might kill off the plastic MacBook line now that they sell $999 MacBook Airs. What other hardware do you think we’ll see?
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
28 responses to “Apple Stores Will Have Staff Sleepovers On July 13th To Prepare For Lion, New Hardware [Rumor]”
Hooray!!! I was very sad that the Lion didn’t roar on the 6th. Hopefully the Air’s will be in stock when I get there.
-Chris
http://friendsofmac.net
An overnight to re-educate Apple Store employees on changes to the Retail Stores themselves. Sure.
But an overnight for an updated product? Not even a new one?
Doesn’t sound right.
Simba!
The overnight would be to swap the display model with the latest model and upgrade the older models to Lion. New promotional displays are setup in the store advertising the new products and the staff is taught the new features of Lion. That’s why an overnight before its release would make complete sense, even though it will be distributed digitally.
I’m so crazy obsessed over the new Macbook Air.
Try again. An overnight does NOT equal new hardware.
Even though Lion isn’t being sold on disks in the stores they will want it on the demo computers to show folks to get them to do the download. And that takes time. Also they will likely change out a window, put up new graphic banners and perhaps refresh the accessory areas.
That’s easily an overnight shift for anywhere from a dozen folks to 3 times that at the big stores
Yay Slumberparty
All these OS “upgrades” will be done from servers that wipe and reinstall every night already. The biggest locations will have to build displays, re-sign everything and roll out new hardware, so that will take an overnight shift.
The real question will be what the lines, if they exist, will look like. No one will be expecting the iPhone or iPad lines, or even the Leopard lines. But if there’s actually a decent queue outside the biggest stores, and even some shorter ones at the others, it’s pretty much light out for the rest of the PC world. If Apple can generate this kind of excitement for a version upgrade of a 10 year old program and a hardware refresh of a 3 year old computer, start shorting MS stock now, it’ll be a bloodbath this Xmas.
SLUMBER PARTY! Bring your app pillows!
It’s always a possibility. iMacs have suddenly rolled out on the “Be Back Soon” site shutdown messages. No presentations hosted for them.
Macbook Air/Pro we’ve seen a few of them announced on the floor but not always, but mostly announced the iPods and iPhones.
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So hold your breath that day, it may very well be an iMac rolling out for the Lion series. I’d say the Mac Mini 4, but we’re a few months away from that.
Of course, last week you reported a “rumor” that Lion would be released this week.
My point is that an overnight is NOT a guarantee of new hardware. There’s plenty for them to do without that.
As for the whole iMac/Mac Mini thing. They just updated the iMacs so that’s unlikely. And there’s no set time table for anything so they can certainly update the Minis now if they want even if it is ‘a few months away’ by others standard
So you are obsessed over a fantasy created by gossip blog sites. Good to know.
Totally dude!