People should measure these things in terms of frame rates (we used to have a utility for this when OSX was young). Over the years we have seen that often these issues (newer machine is slower than older machine) are down to individual perception. If you want to 'see' something is jerkier than before it's perfectly possible to shape perception to fit beliefs.
I'm not seeing any 'objective' performance decrease except in some areas (folder grid view from the Dock...which is a silly view anyway) when scaling is set to maximum, which far exceeds the native screen resolution.
Quartz is a very intense drawing method and has never been as fast as Windows. Some apps like Chrome don't obey Apple's guidelines and have their own rendering engine. Bear than in mind when adjusting your screen resolution and scaling.
This is very true. I got my 2016 15" a few days ago, and after reading about UI lag, I tried the Mission Control. While there was nor real stuttering, I thought I could see this "lower framerate" someone mentioned. Then I forced the MBP to use the dGPU and it was the same. Then I took my old MBP to compare, and animations looked the same. Then the new MBP even seemed better with both GPUs. Then I compared it to my iMac 5K, and again, it was hard to tell.
Then I figured I had no idea what I was seeing and that I was imagining it all. Also, Finder/Safari scrolling is super-smooth on both iGPU and dGPU.
Either way, if there is any lower framerate in animations, it is on every Mac. There is no specific UI lag on the new MBPs. At least on the 15" and I bet the 13" is the same (in fact, the 13" has a more powerfull iGPU running a lower res, so I don't see how there could be). But of course, if you come expecting to find it, you'll imagine seeing it.
That's not to say that some users don't have actual lag due to some other issue.
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The lag's certainly present.
Many have already pointed that the lag is real.
It's more obvious in certain scenarios** -- Mission control after not invoking it for a long time or when you set up fast scrolling (Accessibility -> Trackpad -> Scroll speed as fast and have inertia setup) and when the scrolling comes to a stop there's a stuttery stop and Chrome is incredibly bad and Parallels IE or Chrome browser is horrendous.
First of all, if you read the topics to that post you linked, you'll see that there was no real conclusion, in fact, even the OP mentioned things got fixed after a restart. I am certainly not experiencing anything even remotely close to that video.
I did side-by-side comparisons of my 2016 MBP 15" with my 2013 MBP 15" and with my iMac 5K. I also used gfxCardStatus to verify that I'm using the integrated GPU (and I also checked iStat Menus to see which GPU was getting warm). Then I did comparisons with the dGPU, turning off Automatic graphics switching in Energy Saver. I had a lot of windows open, including one large Photoshop file, Messages, Safari running a graphically intensive page, Mail, Finder and Evernote. I was running the default scaling (meaning it's rendering at higher resolution than the screen).
Now, as a long time gamer, I can tell the difference between framerates. I couldn't detect any noticeable lag, and if there is any, it's present with both iGPU and dGPU and on all other Macs.
Now, you mentioned "Mission control after not invoking it for a long time". This happened several times, with lots of apps open. But you know what - it happens twice as much on my iMac 5K and it happened on my previous MBP too. This has nothing to do with GPU performance (if it did, it wouldn't go away on the second try) - it has something to do with the system polling apps for their current state. In face, it is very rare on my MBP, while it is almost constant on my iMac, when I have a lot of apps open.
The new 2016 MBPs don't have any lag compared to other Macs.
Edit: just tried the iGPU in Chrome. Tried artstation.com, theverge.com and anandtech.com - no lag, smooth scrolling.
