New Thunderbolt-enabled Cinema Display‎ coming soon

Rumors about new product launches and upgrades typically come from (alleged) Apple employees, parts manufacturers and research analysts. They don’t usually come from Apple themselves, but that appears to have happened yesterday, when images of a new Cinema Display briefly appeared on their site, and then disappeared.

Mac Rumors discovered and saved the images (including the one above), which are believed to show the new Cinema Display connected to different Apple products including the Mac Mini, MacBook Pro, iMac and Mac Pro. The display looks identical to the current model, but tellingly shows an OS X Lion desktop picture rather than one from Snow Leopard. Mac Rumors also noted that a url for one of the images contained the part number “MC914” – a number previously thought to belong to a new MacBook.

How and why the new images briefly appeared will remain a mystery, perhaps Apple intended to release the new display last night but cancelled at the last minute, or maybe the images were uploaded in error.

The last update to the Cinema Display was back on the 27th of July 2010 – so it is due for a refresh, and of course, as the current model has a mini display port Apple will want to swap it out for a Thunderbolt port – which would be the main reason for an upgrade.

Also, to add to the speculation of an imminent release, the Apple online store page for the Cinema Display has been showing an error throughout today – I’ve tried viewing the page directly from a link on the main store page (US & UK) only to get the following message:

“Oops! An error has occurred during your session. Please return to the Store Menu to continue shopping.”

As it’s Saturday the chances of a product release today do seem slim, I suspect we won’t see the new display released until next week at the earliest, but it does seem odd to have the images briefly appear yesterday and then to have the errors today.

When it does get released, will you be buying one?