14 DAY TRIAL // Apple last week mistakenly confirmed plans to refresh its LED Cinema Display line by posting images of the new hardware alongside Thunderbolt-enabled Macs showing the Lion Galaxy wallpaper as well.
In what has become a given (rather than unconfirmed rumors), Apple is planning a hardware refresh that will accompany the introduction of OS X Lion this month.
For the past month, evidence of new Macintosh models has emerged via leaked part numbers from both Apple retail staffers and Apple resellers.
Most recently, one of the presumed new MacBook numbers has been correctly assigned to a new LED Cinema Display.
While this doesn’t indicate the White MacBook is being left behind, there is strong indication even from Apple that at least that part number was for a refreshed Cinema Display, not an Apple laptop.
For a brief period of time, Apple accidentally featured Thunderbolt-enabled LED Cinema Displays via the links that now serve up images of the current-generation monitors.
What’s even more interesting is that the URL for one marketing page of the display included the "MC914" part number that had been previously thought to be a new MacBook.
And while some images indicate there will even be new functionality enabled by the Thunderbolt connector (a MacBook Pro daisy-chained to two LED Cinema Displays), others seem to infirm rumors of a Mac Pro redesign.
The images showed various Mac computers, including the Mac mini, tethered to the new displays with no visible changes to their design.
It was thought that at least Apple’s next-generation Mac Pros (which should arrive packing Sandy Bridge CPUs, Thunderbolt I/O and upgraded RAM and storage) featured a radical new design.
Apple recently discontinued the Xserve line of server computers. New, rack-mountable Mac Pros were said to arrive to fill that gap.
All in all, Apple is still widely thought to introduce four Mac upgrades (MacBook Air, Mac mini, Mac Pro, White MacBook) in tandem with OS X Lion this month.
