Apple boosts processing power and memory in MacBook Pro with Retina

29 Jul 2014

Apple's 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display

Apple has just updated the MacBook Pro with Retina line-up with faster processors, double the memory and a new lower starting price of €2,549 for the 15-inch device.

The 13-inch Macbook Pro with Retina with a 2.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor and 8GB of memory now sees prices start at €1,349.

Apple today also lowered the starting price of the non-Retina 13-inch MacBook Pro, which it says is “a very popular system with Windows switchers” by €100 to €1,149.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display features dual-core Intel Core i5 processors up to 2.8 GHz with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.3 GHz and 8GB of memory, up from 4GB in the entry-level notebook. The 13-inch model can also be configured with faster dual-core Intel Core i7 processors up to 3.0 GHz with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.5 GHz.

The top-of-the-line 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display features faster quad-core Intel Core i7 processors up to 2.5 GHz with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.7 GHz, 16GB of memory, up from 8GB in the entry-level notebook, and can be configured with quad-core Intel Core i7 processors up to 2.8 GHz with Turbo Boost speeds up to 4.0 GHz.

“People love their MacBook Pro because of the thin and light aluminium unibody design, beautiful Retina display, all-day battery life and deep integration with OS X,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice-president of Worldwide Marketing.

“The MacBook Pro with Retina display gets even better with faster processors, more memory, more affordable configurations and a free upgrade to OS X Yosemite this fall.”

We recently reported that Apple – which is gearing up to launch iOS 8 in September and its new Mac OS X Yosemite operating system at the end of October – is working on a new 4K Mac desktop and smaller MacBook with a higher resolution display.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com