2011 MacBook Air & Mac Mini Refresh Stalled by Lack of OS X Lion?

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We all know that the new 2011 Air and Mini are coming in the near future, with the obvious star being the upcoming notebook, and we also know that Lion is about to be released too. Therefore we assumed, more than once, that Apple is less likely to launch the Air without Lion on board, and it looks like today we get further confirmation on that matter.

Apple Insider has learned that Apple doesn’t want to launch the new Air models, which are expected to bring hardware updates like Sandy Bridge Intel processors and Thunderbolt I/O support, along other magical features, until a Gold Master of OS X Lion becomes available. In fact that’s clearly suggested right on Apple’s website where the first slideshow of OS X Lion shows the OS running on the MacBook Air (image above).

That way Apple could really make the most of the new Air generation as it would offer, right out of the box, both new specs and features but also new Mac OS perks, over 250 of them, as presented at WWDC 2011.

Similarly, the new Mac Mini and the new Cinema Display models that are to be launched also later this year, are not to be made official until Lion is out of the cage and roaring in the wild.

In other words, even if a 2011 MacBook Air or Mini running Snow Leopard instead of Lion would be launched right away and could be eligible for a free Lion upgrade later down the road, Apple would rather impress the user with a system that’s built to perfection, and that means running the latest OS and using the latest available hardware from the moment it’s first turned on. Of course perfection is a subjective thing and, just like with previous Apple products and OS versions, some issues will certainly appear after the launch of new products, but we’ll deal with them once we get there.

As for a firm release date, well, we have no such thing yet. Apple said on stage at WWDC that Mac OS X Lion is coming in July, so that’s when we expect the Airs to land, and, why not, the new Mac Minis too.