Apple to start production of upgraded, ultra thin Sandy Bridge MacBook Air notebooks

Following up its WWDC musings about a post-PC world, Apple is getting ready with its next generation ultra thin 11.6 and 13.3-inch MacBook Air notebooks that are scheduled to begin production and hit market soon.

AppleInsider has exclusively reported that Apple has placed orders for the manufacturing of 380,000 Sandy Bridge-based MacBook Airs this month, in addition to a 80,000 thousand units of the existing MacBook Airs.

The tech site said an analyst who made this finding has made accurate insight into Apple's hardware plans in the past.

Apple unveiled Mac OS X Lion at the WWDC, the eighth major release of which is the technology giant's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers.

The Mac OS X Lion has over 250 new features in the software, including those adopted from innovations in the iPhone and iPad. Apple had said OS X Lion upgrade will be available in July 2011.

Rumors of an upgraded MacBook Air model featuring Intel's latest Sandy Bridge processors had been doing rounds for quite some months. For some time the rumor mill had it that Apple would move its new line of laptops and possibly desktops to ARM-based chips.

However, in early May Apple said it would present an upgraded iMac line-up of desktops. The upgrade included Sandy Bridge chips, Thunderbolt I/O, new Radeon HD graphics processor and in-built FaceTime HD camera.

The Light Peak/Thunderbolt allows users to connect multiple devices with a single cable and transmits data at a speed of up to 10Gbps data from various devices. Apple states that the Thunderbolt I/O technology allows a user to daisy-chain up to six new peripherals - such as the Promise Pegasus RAID or LaCie Little Big Disk1 - plus an Apple LED Cinema Display.

Apple had unveiled its ultra-thin range of MacBook Air's in Oct. 2010. Available in 11-inch and 13-inch models, the laptops weigh 2.3 pounds and 2.9 pounds respectively. AppleInsider report says the consumer electronics giant will wind down production of existing MacBook Airs this month with a final run of 80,000 units.