Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI shared in a note with AppleInsider on Thursday that he expects Apple to ramp up production of a 13-inch next-generation MacBook Pro with Retina display in September. That 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.
