While Apple’s 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display took the Apple community by storm, many wondered why the 13-inch MacBook Pro didn’t get the Retina treatment alongside its big brother. Rumors have since circulated that Apple is indeed planning a 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, but so far, details have been scarce.
MacRumors notes that benchmarks for a new 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display are now beginning to appear in the Geekbench results database, showing a unique model number compared to the current 13-inch MacBook Pro, and specs consistent with a Retina-enhanced model:
[…]information included in the Geekbench result is consistent with what would be expected on the new machine. The machine is listed as running a 2.9 GHz Intel Core i7-3520M processor, which is offered in the high-end model of the non-Retina 13-inch MacBook Pro. The machine is also listed as running Build 12A2056 of OS X Mountain Lion, with the four-digit build number suffix frequently being used on Apple’s custom operating system builds.
In addition, the motherboard identifier of AFD8A9D944EA4843 previously surfaced as a new machine in early builds of OS X Mountain Lion. […] Finally, the machine’s score of 7806 is on par with results seen for the non-Retina model running the same processor.
Meanwhile, a new report from DigiTimes claims that production for a 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display is on track, and that the new notebook could easily launch before October. This timeframe echoes predictions made by analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who correctly predicted that the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro would be launched as a separate product from the regular 15-inch MacBook Pro. Kuo also correctly predicted that Apple would discontinue the 17-inch MacBook Pro.
It will be interesting to see what happens from this point out – but there seems to be plenty of good reasons to think that a 13-inch MacBook Pro is coming, and that it could arrive very soon!
