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Rarefied Retina MacBook Pros get priced closer to earth

The Retina MacBook Pro gets price cuts ranging between $150 and $200 at Best Buy.

Brooke Crothers Former CNET contributor
Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.
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Brooke Crothers
13.3- and 15.4-inch Retina MacBook Pros.
13.3- and 15.4-inch Retina MacBook Pros Apple

MacBook Pros equipped with a Retina display are not exactly priced to move. Best Buy and Amazon are trying to change that.

Best Buy, for example, is now selling the 128GB version (model MC975LL/A) of the 13.3-inch MacBook Pro Retina for $1,549.99, $150 off the regular $1,699.99 price.

Need 256GB of solid-state storage with that gorgeous Retina screen? That model (MD213LL/A) is now $1,799.99, $200 off the regular price of $1,999.99.

The pricier 15.4-inch models with 256GB and 512GB solid-state drives (MC975LL/A and MC976LL/A, respectively), also got $200 lopped off their regular prices.

Amazon is going even lower, pricing the 128GB 13.3-inch model at $1,515.59, for example.

The online retailer is offering identical discounts to Best Buy on the 15.4-inch models.

These sales may be short-lived (the Best Buy sale is for two days only) but expect more of this kind of discounting from retailers in the future. Apple's Mac sales sank last quarter to 4.1 million compared to 5.2 million in the same quarter last year.

Some of that is because consumers are opting for the cheaper iPad, but the Retina MacBook Pros may be a factor too. When Apple sells configurations that push the least expensive Retina model to $1,700 ($1,699) at the regular price, that's not going to win over a lot of buyers.


Best Buy sale: For two days, the 13.3-inch Retina MacBook Pro now starts at $1,549.99.
Best Buy sale: For two days, the 13.3-inch Retina MacBook Pro now starts at $1,549.99. Best Buy

[Via 9to5Toys ]