Apple updates most popular Macbook Pro with Retina display, thinner profile

At WWDC 2012 in San Francisco last June, Apple debuted its latest generation of Macbooks. Today, at an event to spotlight the new iPad Mini, Apple also unveiled a version of the 13" Macbook Pro which includes the high definition Retina Display. For the last five months, this display has only been available on the 15" Macbook Pro.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said the 13" Macbook Pro is Apple's most popular notebook computer, and by adding the Retina Display into the mix, the company now offers four different stock versions of the PC.

In addition to the improved display, the Retina-equipped Macbook Pros are also built to be significantly leaner than the models debuted just six months ago. To achieve a thinner profile, Apple has equipped these new models exclusively with either 128GB or 256GB of flash-based storage. Their processors are 2.5GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5s and the integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 GPU. They are the lower-end systems on a chip within the Macbook Pro line, but they're paired with 8GB of RAM by default.

Processors can be bumped up to 2.9GHz dual-core i7, storage can be bumped up to 768GB of flash, but the RAM is what you get.

With all this taken into account, the baseline 13" Macbook Pro with Retina display will cost $1,699, and the model with more storage will cost $1,999. They're considerably cheaper than the 15-inch Retina Macbooks from June, but lack the quad-core CPU, discrete GPU, and larger memory configurations, so features and price balance out somewhat. They are available for order online immediately.