Apple "Back to the Mac" Liveblog: new MacBook Air looks a lock-in

Apple's "Back to the Mac" event is set to kick off in around eight hours time, and SlashGear will be liveblogging the whole show.  Join us at 10am Pacific (1pm Eastern or 6pm London) at http://live.slashgear.com/ where we'll see if rumors and leaks of a new MacBook Air – complete with a crisp new unibody chassis and fast-booting OS X version – turn out to be true.

The new MacBook Air has already been reasonably well detailed by the rumor machine in the run up to Apple's event.  We've heard Apple will be announcing two versions, one 11.6-inches and the other 13.3-inches, and have even seen photos of them; according to apparently corroborated information, the smaller Air will have 2.13GHz and 2.33GHz processor options, 2GB of RAM and dual USB 2.0 ports, along with Mini DisplayPort and an SD card reader.

That's not the only thing Apple are tipped to unveil; we're also expecting a new build of OS X that takes advantage of standard solid-state memory across the MacBook Air range to offer super-speedy boot-up times.  Whether or not it will also borrow some of iOS' visual gloss remains to be seen.  We're also expecting a preview of OS X 10.7 "Lion" and perhaps a preview of iLife 2011.

We'll kick off the liveblog in the run-up to the 10am PT event, so join us at http://live.slashgear.com/ later on today!