13-inch MacBook Pro dons a new Retina Display for $1,699

Retina-display loving Apple fans rejoice. Apple's rumored 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display is here.

Apple announced the smaller version of its high-end laptop with the sharper-resolution Retina Display at its event today in San Jose, Calif.

Apple already offers a 15-inch version of the laptop with the Retina Display. And now it offers the same sharp screen for its smaller 13-inch sibling. The notebook also comes with the same dual Thunderbolt I/O connectors, as well as an SD card slot and HDMI out port found on the bigger 15-inch model. It's 20 percent skinnier than any other MacBook on the market, and it only weighs 3.57 pounds.

On the inside, the new MacBook Pro has a dual-core i5 or i7 Ivy Bridge processors, depending on configuration. And it comes with a 7-hour battery, up to 768GB of Flash memory, and 8GB of RAM plus Intel HD 4000 Graphics. Additional specs include a FaceTime HD camera, stereo speakers, and a backlit keyboard.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro Retina Display has 2,560x1,600 pixels.

The price of the new 13-inch MacBook Pro starts at $1,699 for 2.5Ghz dual-core i5 processor with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of memory. That's a full $500 less than the 15-inch MacBook Pro. But it's $500 more expensive than the non-Retina MacBook Pro of the same size.

Rumors have been bubbling up for the past couple of weeks that Apple would introduce the new Retina Display MacBook. Photos of a working version of the laptop were posted last week by the Chinese Web site WeiPhone. The 2,560x1,600 resolution displays have supposedly been in production by manufacturers since August, according to NPD DisplaySearch analyst Richard Shim.