Apple kills 15-inch non-Retina MacBook Pro, 13-incher lives on
Fans of cheap storage, near-legacy ports (at least for Apple), and built-in optical drives, this may be your last chance to get them in an Apple laptop.
- More than two decades experience writing about PCs and accessories, and 15 years writing about cameras of all kinds.
First the 17-inch MacBook Pro and now this.
If you were watching, listening to, or reading about Apple's announcements today, hoping to hear that the less-expensive non-Retina Display MacBook Pros would get fourth-gen Intel Core i-series processors, you're out of luck. On the upside, Apple didn't kill off the model entirely.
While the 15.4-inch model is gone from the current lineup, the $1,199 13.3-inch MacBook Pro remains with its 1,280x800-pixel resolution screen, third-gen 2.5GHz dual-core Intel Core i5, 4GB of 1,600MHz DDR3 memory, 500GB hard drive, and Intel HD Graphics 4000 chip.
Outside of updating the OS version to Mavericks, it remains the same as last year's model. It can be configured with a 1TB hard drive or 512GB solid-state drive (SSD), up to 8GB of memory, and a third-gen dual-core 2.9GHz Intel Core i7 processor.
| MacBook Pro (13.3-inch, 2012 ) | MacBook Pro with Retina (13.3-inch, 2013 ) | |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | third-gen 2.5GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 | fourth-gen 2.4GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 |
| Memory | 4GB | 4GB |
| Storage | 500GB HDD | 128GB SSD |
| Display resolution | 1,280x800 pixels | 2,560x1,600 pixels |
| Graphics | Intel HD Graphics 4000 | Intel Iris Graphics |
| Camera | 720p FaceTime HD camera | 720p FaceTime HD camera |
| Optical drive | 8x SuperDrive | N/A |
| Ports | 2 USB 3.0, FireWire 800, Thunderbolt, SDXC card slot, headphone, Gigabit Ethernet | 2 Thunderbolt, 2 USB 3.0, HDMI, headphone, SDXC card slot |
| Wireless | 802.11n Wi-Fi; Bluetooth 4.0 | 802.11ac Wi-Fi; Bluetooth 4.0 |
| Battery life (wireless Web) | Up to 7 hours | Up to 9 hours |
| Size (WDH); weight | 12.8 inches by 8.9 inches by 0.95 inch; 4.5 pounds | 12.3 inches by 8.6 inches by 0.71 inch; 3.5 pounds |
| Price | $1,199 | $1,299 |
With only $100 separating the new 13.3-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display and the old, non-Retina 13.3-inch base models, though, it's hard to imagine why anyone would even consider the latter. However, it is now the only Apple laptop with an optical drive as well as FireWire 800 and Gigabit Ethernet.
It also has considerably more storage at 500GB. If all of these things plus a $100 savings matter to you in a new laptop, I suggest you grab one before they're gone.