MacBook Air out of stock at Best Buy, refresh coming!

On Monday, Best Buy's online store listed the Apple MacBook Air as "not available," fueling rumors that Apple will launch a next-generation MacBook Air any day now.

9to5 Mac first noticed the change at BestBuy.com and believes this is "indicative of a product refresh." Best Buy now only offers the MacBook Air in a limited number of stores, apart from the 13.3-inch version, which is only available online.

A Best Buy salesperson said the MacBook Air's SKU was still active but that Apple had stopped shipping the notebooks to its online stores.

Last week AppleInsider reported that Apple has already built a next-generation MacBook Air with Thunderbolt, but is delaying volume production until Mac OS X Lion is ready. This appears to contradict an earlier analyst report that said Apple has already placed orders for 380,000 MacBook Airs.

Most believe the next MacBook Air will come with Sandy Bridge processors and high-speed Thunderbolt transfer technology. In late May a Japanese blog reported that Apple was testing MacBook Airs with an A5 chip inside, the same chip used in the iPad 2, though Steve Jobs once said that Apple has no interest in building a netbook.

This article, written by Sara Yin, originally appeared on PCMag.com and is republished on Gear Live with the permission of Ziff Davis, Inc.