Apple CEO Steve Jobs demonstrates iOS 5, Mac OS X Lion and iCloud at WWDC 2011. (Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com)

Apple may be preparing to release two major products simultaneously this week: upgrades for its MacBook Air subnotebook and Mac OS X Lion, the latest Mac operating system.

The MacBook Air refresh and the arrival of OS X Lion will arrive Wednesday, possibly at 8:30 a.m. EDT, sources told AppleInsider. The tip comes in line with a report last week published by All Things Digital, which also claimed the products would debut sometime this week.

The MacBook Air last got a reboot in October 2010 as a 13.3-inch and an 11.6-inch model with super slim silhouettes: 0.68 inches at their thickest point, to be exact. OS X Lion, which was announced at Apple’s Back to the Mac event and previewed at WWDC 2011, is supposed to marry iOS and OS X, merging some of the more successful features in iOS into their new desktop platform. However, early reviews have not been promising.

The new MacBook Airs will feature backlit keyboards and Thunderbolt ports, like their MacBook Pro big brothers, according to AppleInsider. They’ll also include Sandy Bridge processors and come standard with 4GB of RAM and a minimum of 128GB storage capacity — the better to run OS X Lion with.

Apple’s Steve Jobs last year said that both OS X Lion and the superslim MacBook Air are taking lessons learned from the iPad and rolling them into a PC system. Indeed, Lion will incorporate some characteristics from the iPad with new multitouch gestures and a Launchpad for opening apps, which resembles the iPad’s home screen. The MacBook Air’s long battery life and usage of flash memory also mimic the iPad. These two products symbolize the gradual convergence between PCs and mobile products as traditional laptops become thinner, lighter, more low-powered and more dependent on web-based storage.

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