Apple’s MacBook Pro gets a minor update all of a sudden

The latest Intel chipset isn’t quite here, but that doesn’t matter, because if you’ve been putting off buying a new MacBook for the change in chips, you can breathe a little easier thanks to a minor refresh.

Released into Apple’s product system today is a minor bump in the specs to its MacBook Pro Retina range, pushing the spec up and the price down for its not-quite-Ultrabook with a high-grade screen.

“People love their MacBook Pro because of the thin and light, aluminium unibody design, beautiful Retina display, all day battery life and deep integration with OS X,” said Philip Schiller, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing at Apple.

“The MacBook Pro with Retina display gets even better with faster processors, more memory, more affordable configurations and a free upgrade to OS X Yosemite this spring.

It’s not the total refresh computer buyers will be looking forward to, mind you, and once Intel lets loose its latest chips — codenamed “Broadwell” — near the end of the year, we expect Apple will be ready with new computers equipped with the chips.

That said, if the Intel changeover was the thing stopping you from buying a MacBook Pro this year, then aside for dealing with Moore’s Law, you now have another reason to take out that wallet, as Apple updates its 13 inch MacBook Pro computers to include faster processors and 8GB RAM as a minimum, while the 15 inch also receives a boost in chips and a minimum of 16GB RAM.

Those specs should be enough to give anyone a reason to quit waiting, though if you really need to, we anticipate Apple’s changes to come hot on the heels of the Intel announcement at the end of this year, if not a few months after.