Apple’s next generation desktop operating system and a refresh of their best-selling portable will arrive on Bastille Day, the date France celebrates an event that led to a series of events resulting in a lot of headless royals — viva la guillotine, viva le Macintosh! Or, so goes a pair of rumors that posit Apple Store employees are to prepare the world’s most profitable retail chain for the launch(es).

Actually, that’s the conclusion everyone’s jumping to. Here’s what really has been said by a coterie of the usual unnamed sources.

AppleInsider has this piece of the puzzle:

For example, one person with access to the company’s internal retail news network [said] that a new bulletin posted to the system this week is advising store management to perform RAM upgrades to certain Mac models on the showroom floors by Sunday, July 10th

Why is this telling? Because Snow Leopard has a minimum RAM requirement of 1GB whereas Lion needs 2GB to purr on pitch and you know how particular Steve is.

Like peanut butter n’ jelly

Which leads us to a complementary rumor reported by 9 to 5 Mac:

We’ve heard from a few overseas sources that Apple Retail stores are planning ‘overnights’ on July 13th. Overnights are generally where Apple refreshes store displays and trains up management on new products.

And, Sandy Bridge MacBook Airs (I want one) will arrive the same day because everybody’s been predicting a side-by-side launch for weeks already.

All sounds reasonable enough to me…

What’s your take?