There are already a lot of USB 3 drives on the market, and they are far more affordable than Thunderbolt drives. The improved USB specification is over 10x as fast as USB 2.0 and has half the bandwidth of Thunderbolt. Like the MacBook Air, the Retina MacBook Pro does not have a built-in optical drive and uses SSD instead of a traditional hard drive.Īs with the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models, it has built-in USB 3. It is almost 1/4″ thinner than the 13″ and 15″ MacBook Pro models. That’s MacBook Air thin, but unlike the Air, this model doesn’t have a wedge design. The MacBook Pro with Retina Display (quite a mouthful) is the thinnest MacBook Pro ever at 0.71″. Apple surprised everyone by not introducing a 15″ MacBook Air, as the rumor mill widely expected, and instead added a premium version of the 15″ MacBook Pro – one with a super-high resolution 2880 x 1800 pixel 220 ppi Retina Display.
