If you're drawn like a moth to the jaw-dropping Retina Display on Apple's 15-inch MacBook Pro, but want your high-resolution beauty a form factor that's a little more discrete, you may just be in luck this fall. That's what a KGI Securities analyst predicts, at least: Ming-Chi Kuo says he expects a 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display to hit store shelves in September.
Kuo thinks the big draws -- aside from the Retina Display itself, of course -- will be the laptop's energy efficiency and smaller size, along with its (slightly) more budget-friendly price tag, which Kuo pegs at being somewhere around the price of the non-Retina 15-inch MacBook Pro -- so roughly $1,800 to $2,000.
Supply issues may plague a 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display, however, as Kuo expects yield woes with both the high-resolution LCD itself as well as the smaller display assembly it's woven into. As iFixit's teardown shows, the radically designed 15-inch MacBook Pro's Retina Display uses nearly every possible square millimeter of space in order to maintain its slimness. "The entire display assembly is an LCD panel," iFixit writes, so Kuo's prediction that Apple may have issues shrinking it down to the 13-inch form factor seems sound.
If the estimate proves true, Apple is going to have a busy fall; aside from the 13-inch Retina-packing MacBook Pro, Apple is also expected to launch the iPhone 5, iPad mini and a refreshed iMac all-in-one in the same time frame. Kuo also expects new iPod touch and nano offerings to spring up sometime in August or September.
Via AppleInsider and MacRumors
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