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Apple surprised onlookers during WWDC 2012 when the company unveiled the MacBook Pro with Retina display -- a completely new kind of high-end laptop. The 15-inch laptop is super thin, super fast, and has the same super sexy Retina display that debuted in the iPhone 4. Now, it seems that Apple may soon be bringing out a smaller verison of these super expensive laptops in time for the Holidays.

Unfortunately, like the MacBook Air, the new MacBook Pro line that Apple announced Monday at WWDC 2012 that has everyone abuzz contains RAM that is soldered onto the motherboard, and thus cannot be replaced or upgraded.

When it comes to Apple hardware, the buzz is usually about the new iPhone or the new iPad. Apple didn't get into either of those at WWDC 2012, but it did announce a whole bunch of new laptop tech that's sure to get everyone salivating. Along with new versions of the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro, Apple has announced an entirely new line of MacBooks, and boy do they ever look pretty. On top of that, they're all shipping today. Let's have a look at the specs, shall we?

Almost as if they didn't care that much over at Apple, they have made some upgrades to the MacBook Pro line without too much of a mention -- the time-honored Apple tradition of taking the online Apple Store down for a bit while the stock updates. The Pros see their CPUs and GPUs as the main beneficiaries of the the upgrades, and as Apple tends to do, the prices of each upgraded model remain the same as the previous version.

The cheapest of the bunch, the 13-inch MacBook Pro, sports a 2.4GHz Core i5 processor and 500GB of storage, while the better of the pair of 15-inch models boats a 2.4GHz quad-core Core i7 processor and sees a pretty AMD Radeon HD 6770m graphics card packing 1GB of GDDR5 RAM thrown under the hood. The 17-inch MacBook Pro gets a boost and now has a 2.4GHz quad-core Core i7 processor, and the aforementioned AMD Radeon HD 6770m graphics card packing 1GB of GDDR5 RAM. Doesn't seem to be too much fo a difference between the higher-end 15-inch model and the 17-inch model other than those 2 inches of screen. These are only small upgrades, but hey, they're more upgraded than no upgrades. Check out the full line of MacBook Pros over at the Apple Store.

Yesterday, Dell announced the XPS15z, which it touts as the "thinnest 15-inch PC on the planet," bringing "performance, style, battery life and craftsmanship together in a sleek package less than one inch thin." But at least a few observers have wondered if the $999 laptop is cribbing some of that style from a certain other grey 15-inch laptop.

Yesterday, we noted that the new MacBook Pros mark an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, change to Apple's lineup -- they look the same as the past generation of MacBook Pros, weigh the same, have the same battery life, still don't come with SSDs by default, and haven't moved towards the great iPad convergence predicted by Apple-watchers. The main changes here are performance boosts and the addition of the new Thunderbolt data transfer technology. But lest we sweep them under the rug, those performance boosts are very real, thanks in large part to new Sandy Bridge quad-core processors from Intel. PrimateLabs looked through Geekbench benchmarking scores for the new MBPs (shown above), and had this to say:

The performance of the new MacBook Pros is amazing. The slowest MacBook Pro performs on par with the fastest previous-generation MacBook Pro, and the fastest MacBook Pro is 80% faster than the fastest previous-generation MacBook Pro. In fact, if you look at our Mac Benchmark charts, you'll see that the fastest MacBook Pro is faster than a lot of Mac Pros (including the current generation of Mac Pros). The new MacBook Pros truly are portable workstations.

Note that these tests measure CPU and memory performance, and do not reflect the additional muscle provided by video cards or external storage devices. If you want to run the same tests on your Mac, you can download Geekbench and git 'er done in a matter of one or two minutes. My early 2008 MacBook Pro got a 3200. (PrimateLabs via MacRumors)

Today is Steve Jobs' birthday, and as expected, Apple has celebrated the event by rolling out the new generation of MacBook Pro laptops. As is underscored by the fact that Apple introduced these in a relatively low-key way without much fanfare, the new MacBook Pros mark an evolutionary rather than revolutionary change to the MBP lineup: Faster processors are available across the board, yes, and "Thunderbolt" (formerly known as Light Peak) has been unveiled, promising data transfer at speeds of up to 10 GB per second. Apple says that "the Thunderbolt pipeline is more than 12 times faster than FireWire 800 and up to 20 times faster than USB 2.0, and it offers unprecedented expansion capabilities," with new peripherals on the way. But the new MacBook Pros do not bring the rumored operating system on an SSD that we heard about earlier this week: More broadly, they haven't morphed into the iPad-laptop hybrids that many envisioned with the launch of the MacBook Air, though today Apple released to developers a preview of Mac OS X Lion, which is expected to bridge the gap somewhat between iOS and previous builds of OS X.  This is an incremental upgrade, and while the laptops may be worth getting if you're in need of a new computer anyway, it may be worth waiting until either this fall's likely MacBook Air update or next spring's likely MacBook Pro update to see if Apple whips up something that's dramatically different from MacBook Pros to date. Specs and prices below:

Apart from the iPad 2, the iPad 3, the Apple Store in Grand Central Station, and the cheap new iPhone, people just have not been freaking out enough about Apple-related rumors lately, which is why it is important to know that this may be the week that Apple announces its expected late winter/early spring refresh of the MacBook Pro line. One interesting bit of evidence marshalled in support of this theory is that Apple's online store, which normally ships everything within 24 hours (see, for instance, the MacBook Air page), has pushed shipping for MacBook Pro computers back to 3-5 business days, suggesting a rare act of mercy on the part of a company from which one always seems to buy things the moment before they become outclassed by a newer model. AppleInsider: "Apple usually reserves this kind of across-the-board shipping delay for imminent new product releases. Placeholder SKUs for new Apple-branded computers discovered Sunday in the Best Buy inventory system appeared to further corroborate the pending upgrade. Five models were listed on the electronics reseller's Laptop Configuration tool ranging in price from $1,199 to $2,499." If the announcement indeed happens this week, Thursday is said to be the day. The big question on every Mac person's mind, however, is how new the new MacBook Pros will be: They're expected to use Intel's new Sandy Bridge processor, but theories abound as to whether they'll simply consist of a spec refresh, whether they'll converge further towards the MacBook Air line with features like more widespread Flash memory, or whether they'll feature the very promising-looking new Light Peak technology from Intel. Hopefully, we'll learn soon enough. (via AppleInsider, 9to5Mac)

If Three Guys and a Podcast's report holds true, the next iteration of the MacBook Pro will release in April 2011, featuring solid-state drives, and will dispense with optical drives, like the recent version of the MacBook Air. It is also speculated that the new MacBooks may feature Intel's Light Peak optical cabling, which is supposed to be a universal bus to replace various buses, such as SATA, USB, HDMI, PCI Express and FireWire.

We've previously reported on the rumblings about a new MacBook Pro coming soon, rumblings which got louder when AppleInsider got its hands on what it said were the specs of the new MacBook Pros earlier this morning, and louder still when the Apple Store went down today. Well, the rumblings were right: The Apple Store just came back up, and as expected, it brought with it six new MacBook Pro models, two 13-inches, three 15-inches, and a 17-inch. Full specs after the jump:

Electronics retailer Micro Center has received part numbers for four new Mac computers, which it says corresponds with three 15" and one 17" MacBook Pros. From MacRumors.com:

We've since received independent confirmation from another source besides Microcenter that those part numbers are real, and that we should expect new 15" and 17" MacBook Pros very soon.

Apple may have skipped the 2010 Macworld Expo, but Microsoft not only showed up, but made a splash with their highly visible promotions for Microsoft Office 2011.

Now, Microsoft is trying to outApple Apple on their own turf again: they're giving away two 15'' MacBook Pros, custom-colored and bearing Microsoft Office 2008 insignia.

Oh, dear lord. At least it's unibody. (h/t TUAW. this is hopefully not real.)