More evidence of a 13″ Retina MacBook Pro surfaces as benchmarks

There may soon be a 13" version of Apple's new Retina MacBook Pro, at least if online benchmarks are to be believed. A machine purporting to be a 13" Retina MacBook Pro recently appeared in the GeekBench online database—the second of such benchmarks to make an appearance in the last month. This time, however, the machine claims to be running a seed of OS X 10.8.1, which Apple has not yet released to the public or its developer community.

The only publicly available MacBook Pro with a "retina" class display is the new 15" version that was released at WWDC in June. But a 13" version has been rumored since earlier this year, leading customers to wonder when Apple plans to release the notebook to the public. In July, the first benchmarks claiming to come from "MacBookPro10,2" appeared in GeekBench's database. For reference, the current 13" MacBook Pro is referred to in Apple's system as "MacBookPro9,2." The 15" MacBook Pro is "MacBookPro9,1" and the 15" Retina MacBook Pro is "MacBookPro10,1." As such, Apple's naming patterns indicate that the new 13" system will see a similar upgrade as the 15" Retina MacBook Pro.

Now, a second MacBookPro10,2 has appeared with similar specs to the first, but with an updated operating system. The results were submitted earlier this week but didn't grab attention until Friday (hat tip to MacRumors for the find). The machine allegedly has a 2.9GHz Core i7-3520M processor, and its GeekBench (32-bit) score sits at 7,756.

The more interesting tidbit is the claim that it's running 10.8.1, which some believe is evidence that Apple itself is testing this machine internally. Apple indicated earlier this week that it was planning to seed 10.8.1 to developers soon, but such a release is still pending.

Nitpicking aside, it makes logical sense that Apple would work toward bringing high-resolution displays to the rest of its notebook line over time. Whether Apple plans to eventually ship a 13" Retina MacBook Pro is a matter of "when," not "if," so we think it's only a matter of time before we see such a machine in the wild.