Apple on Wednesday upgraded microprocessors inside its MacBook Pro 15” laptops with retina-class display and also lowered the starting prices of the MacBook Pro 13” Retina notebooks. With the price-tag that starts at $1499, the 13” laptops with dual-core processors and extreme-quality displays will be much more competitive on the market of business-oriented laptops.

The Apple MacBook Pro with 13” retina-class display (2560*1600 resolution) powered by dual-core Intel Core i5 2.50GHz/3.10GHz processor with Intel HD 4000 graphics core, 8GB of DDR3 RAM and 128GB solid-state drive now costs $1499, down $200. The more advanced 13” MBP laptop with dual-core Intel Core i5 2.60GHz/3.20GHz chip and 256GB SSD is priced at $1699, down $300.

With the lowered price of the MacBook Pro with 13” retina display its market prospects got a lot brighter. While at $1499 the laptops are still expensive for consumers, they will clearly be carefully examined by those looking for premium-quality notebooks and those who need to fit a lot on small screens. Still, professional road warriors with demands will hardly appreciate Intel integrated graphics core and the lack of quad-core microprocessor option.

Apple decided not to lower the price of the premium 15” notebooks used by professionals, but upgraded central processing units inside the machines. The “entry-level” Apple MacBook Pro with 15” retina-class display (2880*1800 resolution) for $2199 now features a faster quad-core Intel Core i7 2.40GHz/3.40GHz processor (up 100MHz from the previous version), 8GB DDR3 memory and 256GB SSD. Meanwhile, the top-of-the-line MacBook Pro with 15” retina screen for $2799 now comes with a new quad-core Intel Core i7 2.70GHz/3.70GHz processor, 16GB of DDR3 memory and 512GB of solid-state storage. The MBP/retina 15” notebooks continue to feature Nvidia GeForce GT 650M graphics processors.

Apple today also announced that the top-of-the-range MacBook Air 13” (1440*900) with dual-core Intel Core i5 1.80GHz/2.80GHz processor with built-in HD 4000 graphics core, 4GB of DDR3 memory and 256GB solid-state drive has a new lower price of $1399.

Tags: Apple, macbook, OS X, Mac OS, Intel, Ivy Bridge, Nvidia, Kepler, Geforce