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The new MacBook Air is expected to have two variants with base model having an Intel Sandy Bridge processor, 128 GB Solid State Drive and 4 GB of RAM and also receive the Thunderbolt and Sandy Bridge treatment and may also see a major price cut. So, Apple is preparing to refresh their hardware lineup and they’re waiting for Lion to ship before they release the spec updated products into the wild…………

In a communication to AppleInsider, Concord Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said his industry checks suggest Apple is no longer placing orders MacBook Airs with 2GB of RAM. Instead, those checks indicate that all new 11.6- and 13.3-inch models will include 4GB of RAM as standard, as it will improve performance of Mac OS X Lion, also due to ship on each model. Similarly, Kuo cited the same checks in suggesting that Airs with just 64GB solid-state-drives may go away in favor of Apple shipping only 128GB and 256GB models as standard, given that the bulk of Apple‘s shipments have been for models containing those larger drives. The analyst and proven insider said his checks indicate the SSD drives will remain pluggable, and won’t be soldered to the logic board. In terms of which Sandy Bridge CPUs Apple has chosen for the Air, Kuo pointed to three specific Intel ultra-low-voltage chips that launched just last month as prime candidates based on his checks: the Core i5-2467M (1.6GHz), i7-2637M (1.7GHz), and i7-2677M (1.8GHz). Each of the chips consume only 17 watts, making them suitable for the slim design of the Mac Book Air and support systems with up to 8GB of total memory. Apple has been waiting for the release of Mac OS X Lion before issuing any new Mac hardware updates. As reported last month and reiterated this month, those updates will follow the launch of Mac OS X Lion in the coming weeks. Although Apple is believed to have had some ambitions of launching Lion this week, at least one person familiar with the matter said earlier in the week that last minute concerns with one of the system’s new features (app Resumes) would likely cause a minor delay. The redesigned MacBook Air launched last October with a thinner and lighter design and a new 11.6-inch model with a $999 entry level price. The major changes, including the adoption of only solid-state flash hard drives, took the MacBook Air from being a relatively niche product in Apple’s lineup to one of its hottest selling Macs.

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