Apple Stores Will Have Staff Sleepovers On July 13th To Prepare For Lion, New Hardware [Rumor]

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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?

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