After last week’s rumors regarding the release date of March 1 for the new MacBook Pro, there is now talk that the Apple Refresh is now as imminent as Friday, February 24.

One of the signs pointing in this direction is that Apple has stopped the immediate shipment of its MacBook notebooks. The Atlantic put up an Apple Circular that shows that customers who wish to buy an Apple MacBook must wait for 3-5 business days for the item to ship. The article reports that this is highly unusual for Apple which often ships out devices the same day that they are ordered. ZDNet also reported that Best Buy posted part numbers for the new MacBooks and then quickly removed them, confirming the February 24 release. There is also talk that European Apple sellers have been told to expect sealed packages this week and were not allowed to open before Friday.

The new MacBook Pros are drawing a lot of speculation and attention, mainly because the features that have been leaked so far have been pretty spectacular. The new MacBook is said to be much lighter, thinner, with a very fast Sandy Bridge processor that will have solid state drives instead of traditional drives. This week, there’s talk of a new feature of the MacBook Pro. Cnet is reporting that Apple will soon release a new high speed connector technology,  Intel’s ”Light Peak” that would “make a single replacement for the myriad cables that connect to monitors, external drives, scanners, printers, and anything else that plugs into a computer.”

There is no confirmation that this new technology could coincide with the release of the new MacBook Pro, even though developers put the release date for the first half of 2011, says PCmag. The fiber optic technology which would be faster than even a USB 3.0 would be able to carry 10 GB per seconds in connection speed. It will allow users to connect gadgets and devices to PCs with fiber optic lines, but that for the first version, “Light Peak” is likely to use copper instead of light-based technology, says Intel according to Cnet.