Apple has released a refreshed lineup of MacBook Pro laptops with upgraded CPUs and memory, though overall, the boosts are very modest at best.
All 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina notebooks have 8GB of RAM, while the two 15-inch models have 16GB of RAM standard. On top of that, CPU clock speed is now 200MHz faster.
Here’s a breakdown of each Retina model as of today. The 13-inch MacBook Pros will get you Intel Core i5 dual-core processors, 8GB of RAM, and Intel Iris Graphics. The $1,299 and $1,499 versions each have CPUs clocked at 2.6GHz, while the $1,799 model’s processor runs at 2.8GHz. The $1,299 unit has a 128GB PCIe SSD, while the $1,499 and $1,799 models have 256GB and 512GB PCIe SSDs, respectively.
As for the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina notebooks, the $1,999 unit has an Intel Core i7 2.2GHz quad-core CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 256GB PCIe SSD, and Intel Iris Pro Graphics. The top of the line unit, which costs $2,499, has a Core i7 quad-core processor running at 2.5GHz, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB PCIe SSD, and Nvidia GeForce GT 750M graphics along with the Intel Iris Pro Graphics chip built into its CPU. The high-end 15-inch MacBook Pro cost $2,599 before this upgrade.
On the upgrade front, you can add a 1TB PCIe SSD to the $1,799, $1,999, and $2,499 models, along with a Core i7 CPU whose Turbo Boost clock tops out at 4GHz, though the latter item only applies to the 15-inch models. Also worth mentioning is the fact that the lone non-Retina MacBook Pro, a 13-incher, got its price reduced from $1,199 to $1,099; a slash of $100.
MacBook Pro upgrades were rumored yesterday after an image which was posted on a Chinese tech forum suggested that Apple would be releasing beefed up notebooks today.
Apple refuses to upgrade to Nvidia’s 800M line of graphics card, which have been available for months now, though we presume that it will add 800M GPUs to MacBook Pros as part of a larger update later this year. Intel is slated to release 5th-generation Broadwell CPUs later this year, and we strongly expect them to show up in the next big MacBook Pro upgrade cycle as well. On top of that, there’s the possible release of a 12-inch MacBook Air with Retina sometime this fall or winter, which has been rumored for months.
This is the second MacBook refresh this year. Apple released updated models of its MacBook Air back in late April.
You can order the upgraded MacBook Pros right now, which ship “within 24 hours.”
