Why The Coming MacBook Air Revision Has To Wait for Lion’s Release

MacUser UK’s Kenny Hemphill observed late last week that while an imminent launch of an upgraded MacBook Air with Sandy Bridge Core “i” power and Thunderbolt I/O is about is about as open as secrets get where Apple is concerned, we’ll probably have to wait a bit longer until Apple is ready to ship OS X 10.7 Lion in July before it’s ready to release the new Air, since it “would be stupid” to launch it now with Snow Leopard. YI completely agree with that assessment.

Hemphill reasons that if Apple were to ship a batch of revised MacBook Airs running Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, savvy potential buyers would continue delaying their purchase anyway until Lion ships, leaving Apple with a bunch of unsold stock which would need upgrading to Lion and repackaging (not to mention that the packaging itself as well as sales and promotional literature for the refreshed MacBook Air would have to reflect whatever OS version was installed). Less-savvy customers who did buy a Snow Leopard Air would be wroth about their new machine going out of date and requiring a full OS version update so soon after purchase.

The MacBook Air is no longer the expensive, niche laptop it was during its first iteration, Hemphill further observes, noting that the diminutive laptop is now a key part of Apple’s Mac strategy, reportedly selling at about half the rate of the MacBook Pro family of laptops (now by far the best-selling Mac models) citing Apple’s acting CEO Tim Cook in a conference call with analysts on Apple’s second quarter results, and the company’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller, at the WWDC keynote, both affirming that the MacBook Air is a significant part of the reason Mac sales are growing much faster than PCs.

Hemphill suggests, and I likewise once again fully agree, that the machine Steve Jobs has declared “the future of notebooks” — a solid state memory, low storage-capacity notebook with no optical storage — makes a perfect showcase for Apple’s new iCloud online service and some of the forthcoming OS 10.7 Lion’s new iOS-esque mobile OS features, and that it’s no accident that Apple is featuring the Air on its Lion Website to display the new OS, underscoring the revamped, streamlined OS X and ultra-slim notebooks as the future of the Mac.

HardMac’s Lionel also weighs in on the MacBook Air, noting that the smallest Mac notebook has become a major source of revenue for Apple, with JP Morgan last week bumping its Air sales projection upward, increasing its estimate of Apple’s revenue opportunity for the ultra-thin Air from $2.2 billion to $3 billion.

Lionel also ventures that a strategy to vault the revised MacBook Air far out of reach of its competition again would be to launch it together with a line of new Thunderbolt I/O based accessories, adapters, and perhaps even an external graphics card (which is technically possible) — everything necessary to equip the ultra-portable laptop for powerful desktop substitute duty when at the office or at home. Great idea — a 21st-Century revival of Apple’s PowerBook Duo concept of the early ’90s, only this time with plenty of real power computing behind it.