There have been expectations that Apple could release OS X Lion this week, potentially as early as tomorrow (July 14th). A few doubts, however, have been introduced in the past couple of days. LoopInsight's Jim Dalrymple tweeted this evening that he hopes "you guys don't lose too much sleep waiting for the new Macs and Lion tomorrow :)", suggesting that release won't happen on Thursday. Dalrymple's been known to have some inside Apple contacts in the past.

Meanwhile, Arstechnica's John Siracusa said during his podcast (within first two minutes) on 5by5.tv that he'd also heard that Lion is not coming this week. Siracusa, however, describes the information as "third-hand, fourth-hand" information.

So while neither source is particularly concrete about their predictions, given the anticipation surrounding OS X Lion's release, we thought it worth noting.

If we do believe that OS X Lion isn't coming this week, then despite the leaked part numbers, it's almost certain the new hardware will also not launch this week. At this stage Apple is expected to launch the new MacBook Airs and Mac Minis with Lion pre-installed, so they can't launch the machines without first officially releasing OS X Lion to the public.

For Apple's part, they have only promised that OS X Lion will ship in July, and have made no promises about new hardware.

