It’s a rumor, but one can always hope it’ll come true.
Per AppleInsider, Apple will bring a high-resolution Retina display to its 13-inch MacBook Pro with a product update set to launch this October, according analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI in a note to clients on Thursday. Kuo stated that he expects Apple to ramp up production of a 13-inch next-generation MacBook Pro with Retina display in September. Such a change would allow the product to hit stores in early October, in time for the holiday shopping season.
Kuo was the first to indicate that Apple would retire its 17-inch MacBook Pro, and that the 15-inch next-generation MacBook Pro with Retina display would be sold alongside the previous-generation MacBook Pro with lower-resolution display and thicker design. Both of those details proved true this week at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference.
Apple has the “highest hopes” for the new 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, according to Kuo. But Apple was likely unable to unveil the new product at WWDC this week because of a low yield rate and greater assembly difficulty, he said.
Like the next-generation Retina display MacBook Pro, the 13-inch variety is expected to lack an optical disc drive and rely solely on solid-state flash memory storage. Kuo expects the screen to have a resolution of 2,560 by 1,600 pixels, and he said the 13-inch model will be slightly thinner than the 15-inch model, at 18 millimeters.
The next-generation 13-inch MacBook Pro is not expected to have discrete graphics like its 15-inch counterpart, but will instead rely on Intel HD 4000 integrated graphics. Kuo also expects it to have an Intel Ivy Bridge processor with a clock speed greater than 2 gigahertz.
As for the just-released 15-inch Retina display MacBook Pro, Kuo said that Apple should have about 300,000 units of the next-generation notebook available to sell this month, a number that he called a “moderate” amount.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.