MacBook Air rumored to receive June update to Sandy Bridge

The new MacBook Air models introduced in October of 2010 have been an amazing success for Apple. Not only were they cited as being responsible for a dramatic increase in Mac sales during Apple's first fiscal quarter for 2011, but the little MacBooks seem to be everywhere. At Macworld Expo last month, it was apparent that the 11.6" MacBook Air had become the de facto "Blogger's Mac," as all of the cool kids had them.

Now CNET is reporting that the best are going to get even better. According to the tech news source, Apple is planning a June update to the MacBook Air that will move the line to Intel's Sandy Bridge processors. As we've discussed here at TUAW in other posts, the Sandy Bridge processors are the third generation of the Intel Core Processors (Core, Nehalem, Sandy Bridge) that currently power the majority of the Mac line.

The main feature of the Sandy Bridge architecture is that the graphics processing silicon is built right onto the chip; there's no need for a secondary chip or chipset to provide that capability. This would allow the new MacBook Air models to boast much speedier gaming and multimedia graphics with no increase in cost or power usage.

Apple is also rumored to have some new MacBook Pro models in the works for a March release. Those devices would be the first to benefit from the newest Intel technology.