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Apple cuts MacBook Pro Retina prices, bumps specs

The starting price of the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display drops by $200 to $1,499. The MacBook Air sees a price drop, too.

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Roger Cheng (he/him/his) was the executive editor in charge of CNET News, managing everything from daily breaking news to in-depth investigative packages. Prior to this, he was on the telecommunications beat and wrote for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal for nearly a decade and got his start writing and laying out pages at a local paper in Southern California. He's a devoted Trojan alum and thinks sleep is the perfect -- if unattainable -- hobby for a parent.
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Roger Cheng
Apple's Retina Display MacBook Pro is now officially in stock.
Apple's Retina Display MacBook Pro is now officially in stock. Apple

Apple today dropped the prices in its line of MacBook Pro laptops with Retina display while boosting processor speeds.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina now starts $1,499, or $200 less than before. The higher-capacity 256GB version costs $1,699, or $300 cheaper than the original price. The processor clock speed also gets boosted to 2.6 gigahertz from 2.5GHz.

The 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina gets a speed boost, with the lower-end version getting its clock speed bumped up to 2.4GHz from 2.3GHz, and the higher-end version getting bumped up to 2.7GHz quad-core processor from 2.6GHz, as well as double the RAM at 16 gigabytes.

The line of MacBook Pros with Retina displays have always been a higher-end item that fewer consumers could buy. The starting 13-inch MacBook Pro is significantly less at $1,199. With its own iPad sales cutting into Mac revenue, Apple is likely looking to goose interest with a minor price cut and spec upgrade.

Apple also cut the price of its high-end MacBook Air. The 256GB version now costs $1,399, or $100 less than the previous price.

The prices have yet to take effect on Apple's Web site, but will change later today.