Apple announced it's cutting the price of MacBook Pro with Retina display while increasing the hardware specs of the device. Apple is offering the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display with 128GB of flash storage for $1,499. This new price is a $200 less than the original $1,700 starting price when it was released in June. Consumers wishing to upgrade to the faster edition of the 13-inch model with a 2.6 GHz processor and 256GB of storage can get one for $1,699.
Individuals seeking a top-of-the-line MacBook Pro will be pleased to learn that Apple introduced two new 15-inch MacBook Pros. Both feature specification upgrades, one has a faster 2.4 GHz quad-core processor, 256GB of flash and costs $2,199. The highest-priced available 15-inch model comes with a new 2.7 GHz quad-core processor and 16GB of memory and 512GB of flash. The lowest-priced MacBook model announced is the 13-inch MacBook Air at $1,399 and it comes with 256GB of flash.
Lower sales of Mac products were reported in Apple's last quarter, 1.1 million less than the final quarter of the previous year. In response to the falling numbers, Apple's CEO Tim Cook cited manufacturing costs and a delayed retail release date of the iMac as the reason.
As ABC News reports, Apple is lowering prices now because of the decline in cost for internal computer components such as RAM and flash storage.
"When prices of components come down, they are willing to lower prices when they can," he said. "We don't expect Apple to make the cheapest products on the market, but they are committed to being affordable in the market," said Ben Bajarin, principal analyst at Creative Strategies. He doesn't believe that the new price drops in the MacBooks are related to the Mac earnings reported during the company's quarterly report.
Apple boasts the MacBook Pro with Retina display has the world's highest resolution available on a notebook display. Compared to other notebook hard drives, the MacBook Pro with Retina display's flash storage claims to be up to four times faster.
