2012 MacBook Pro Retina - Jerky Finder Menus

Clean install of OSX is the way to go here.

 

Well it can't hurt to try reinstalling with a time machine backup.

He said you should do that because if it is a software bug (which it seems to be) then a reinstall will often fix them. It's a pain but yeah.

 

it's hard to tell but I don't think mine is jerky and pauses. maybe it's doing it, hard to tell.

maybe the store models don't do it because they don't have very many applications installed?

 

Well then my mid-2012 doesn't seem to be doing it? It kind of seems jerky but without a comparison I can't be certain.

But there have been reports of our older retinas needing a tiny bit more grunt that happened with the .1 processor bumps.

 

Well something was wrong with the logic board or they wouldn't have replaced it but that's not in any way related to jerky menus.

The UI lagging is an issue because of how many million more pixels being displayed than a MBA or cMBP screen. If you do reinstall from scratch and it resolves the issue please make sure and update the thread because I'd do it if it made a performance difference.

But it sounds like you already did that in the store when you installed from the recovery mode so if the UI is bugging you there really isn't much more to be done other than switch the discrete graphic card on all the time or sell the rMBP and buy one of the newer versions.

 

The new ones in the store have a .1 MHz processor bump (the 2012 base model was a 2.3 GHz processor and now it's a 2.4). You could have been looking at a 2.7 model or a 2.4 model--either would have been slightly faster and more powerful than your model if it was the base 2.3 like mine. But if you changed to the discrete graphics and still experienced the problem then processing/graphical power is not the issue.

Try the clean install and let us know the results, please.

 

Have an external hard drive?

If so, try clean install to external and boot off it to test. If not jerky it's something about the OS or possibly the SSD (Doubt it's the SSD).

If no external drive, erase and install and see how it responds.

Too late now, but if anything you should have asked the genius at the time to NetBoot into a triage drive and test...

 

Make sure it's not indexing something or downloading your mail, if your os is clean, after setting up e-mail accounts, it will download a copy and make indexes for faster search. Indexing hard drive (documents and apps) and downloading and indexing mail may slow you mac down.

 

Same Problem but diff machine...

I have a relatively newly purchased Apple refurbished 2.7 i5 27" iMac, 8GB RAM w/ 3TB drive running 10.8.3. Most programs seem to function fine example Lightroom, Photoshop, Encore, Premiere Pro but the finder is absolutely horrible. I've been using Macs for over 15 years and never seen one act like this, accept when an HDD is getting very full. Mine is jerky and slow responding when using Finder no matter how you have the Finder set, icon view, details etc... Does not matter. I have not had a lot of time to test this, but if I figure something out I will shout out. I'd bet the fix for both our machines will be similar. By the way is your machine all stock or did you install or have someone install HDD or RAM after the MAC was purchased?

FYI for those who may need to see a side by side comparison to see if your machine is suffering from this phenomenon... well trust me, if this is happening to your machine, you will know. It is extremely noticeable, annoying and almost useless to get any real work done in the Finder.

And yes I agree it is most likely a software issue, but???

 

My issue is currently resolved...

After I wrote my original response, I started tinkering w/ troubleshooting this issue. As I was performing some standard test, Notifications popped up and notified me that I had some updates available. I downloaded the 10.8.4 update (made available June 4th) and this fixed my problems.

OP, have you installed the 10.8.4 update? And if so, did it fix your issue as well?

Update... I spoke too soon! My issue still exist? I'll do some more testing. It does function much better so if anyone is suffering a similar issue the update is worth a shot.

 

Wow mine has this same issue too. Interesting.

 

maybe you could ask apple to replace the entire lappy? By any chance do you have filevault or disk encryption on? those things can slow down, i just tried what you had asked and nope its not jerky butter smooth. I have the early 2013 16gb 2.7ghz

 

That TINY bit of CPU performance would make no difference when scrolling a menu.