Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Does window resizing lag for you too?

R

respectabilia

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 24, 2010
236
5
I just purchased a retina macbook pro 13 inch and found that resizing windows can be laggy. I've attached a quick screen recording of it here. It's not as bad on the Apple webpage but on the gmail web page there's terrible lag.

And it's not just Safari windows resizing. I also had the same problem trying to resize the Omnifocus window and its clearer here. Having said that, resizing works OK with other apps such as Reminders. You can see resizing Omnifocus and Reminders windows compared here.

I've been so used to using iOS and the buttery smoothness of the way iOS tracks my finger, this stuff just bugs me right now. I used to let it go as I was previously occasionally using a Macbook Air from 2011, but I've purchased the latest mac and a macbook pro, so I would've expected there to be enough power to resize windows without any lag.

Anyone else seeing this? Is this hardware that's not powerful enough? Or OS X that's not optimised enough? Or both?

If the above links aren't working, try these ( give a couple of minutes for the upload):
http://cl.ly/2b0Q3N0e072g
http://cl.ly/2l1q3s3L1T3M
 
I'm pretty sure mine does the same thing, but I don't spend all day re-sizing windows so I just don't care.
 
Does window resizing lag for you too?

I think if I hadn't been so used to iOS, it wouldn't have bothered me. Touch lag used to be something that Android used to get stick over compared to iOS and still does. Definitely out of place and jarring now to find OS X lacks the buttery smoothness.

----------

Like retina screens. When we got used to retina screens on iOS, non-retina macs were hard to work with.

Same for touch/interface smoothness.
 
Its application dependent. Resizing is a potentially expensive operation because it involves a continuous recomputation of the window layout. Applications that are efficient at layout will resize smoothly, applications with very expensive layout will be laggy (best example — App Store). In Safari, it depends on the website. Usually it resizes very smoothly, but when you have complex web layouts inside (like newer Apple scrolling/zooming pages), the resize performs awful.

Apple could probably fix it by changing some internal algorithms (e.g. how often the content is updated when resizing), but that is probably low priority. The easiest way is to disable the live updates during resize altogether , but that would take a lot from OS X. This problem is more tricky than many realise.
 
leman said:
Its application dependent. Resizing is a potentially expensive operation because it involves a continuous recomputation of the window layout. Applications that are efficient at layout will resize smoothly, applications with very expensive layout will be laggy (best example — App Store). In Safari, it depends on the website. Usually it resizes very smoothly, but when you have complex web layouts inside (like newer Apple scrolling/zooming pages), the resize performs awful.

Apple could probably fix it by changing some internal algorithms (e.g. how often the content is updated when resizing), but that is probably low priority. The easiest way is to disable the live updates during resize altogether , but that would take a lot from OS X. This problem is more tricky than many realise.
Click to expand...


Thanks for that explanation. You think this is likely to improve with next OSX or this is the way it's always been and always will be?
 
I've recently purchased the 13" retina 2015 model, and I've found it to be very sluggish. It's my first mac and it runs just like my 2011 samsung ultrabook.
I'll be upgrading to a 15" retina 2015 to see if the quad-core helps with the performance at all, or if it's simply a Yosemite coding inefficiency. If it is indeed Yosemite, I'll be turning back to PC (after trying bootcamp, ofc). When my almost 3 year old iPad 4 feels snappier than a $1500 macbook PRO, you know Apple is messing up. The iPad even runs games smoother at higher resolutions (Hearthstone).

However, this "window resizing lag" is just an intensive process for any computer. I've tried it on my quad-core i5 WIN 7 desktop with 16GB ram, and radeon 7850 video card, it lags similarly to my new macbook pro in this regard.
 
Studflower said:
I've recently purchased the 13" retina 2015 model, and I've found it to be very sluggish. It's my first mac and it runs just like my 2011 samsung ultrabook.

I'll be upgrading to a 15" retina 2015 to see if the quad-core helps with the performance at all, or if it's simply a Yosemite coding inefficiency. If it is indeed Yosemite, I'll be turning back to PC (after trying bootcamp, ofc). When my almost 3 year old iPad 4 feels snappier than a $1500 macbook PRO, you know Apple is messing up. The iPad even runs games smoother at higher resolutions (Hearthstone).



However, this "window resizing lag" is just an intensive process for any computer. I've tried it on my quad-core i5 WIN 7 desktop with 16GB ram, and radeon 7850 video card, it lags similarly to my new macbook pro in this regard.
Click to expand...


Cool. Let us know of any changes with the 15 inch.
 
Adolf said:
my windows xp not lag 10 years ago why now 2015 has gone backwards
Click to expand...

Its because Windows XP is crap :) Its UI-related code is extremely primitive and of course cheap to run. Developing a complex, great looking application under win32 API is a nightmare. For instance, things like proper unicode text layout, UI element sizing, animations etc. This is why many win32 applications draw quickly but look absolutely awful and then usually have problems with non-latin text. In comparison, OS X makes developing highly complex, elegant applications a breathe, but the abstraction involved cost more. And it is often the case that developers make architectural mistakes when designing their applications, making UI updates even more costly.
 
I'm on the brand new 15" MBPr with dGPU, and I see the same lag issue resizing just about any window. We can thank OS X Yosemite for that! I'm hoping Apple fixes this soon (perhaps WWDC?)
 
Zakzilla said:
I'm on the brand new 15" MBPr with dGPU, and I see the same lag issue resizing just about any window. We can thank OS X Yosemite for that! I'm hoping Apple fixes this soon (perhaps WWDC?)
Click to expand...


Ok. Unfortunate in a way but also fortunate for me to know that this seems more down to software optimisation than the need for a more powerful machine. There was a time I hear that Mac users rarely had to think about software being optimised for their machines...
 
respectabilia said:
Ok. Unfortunate in a way but also fortunate for me to know that this seems more down to software optimisation than the need for a more powerful machine. There was a time I hear that Mac users rarely had to think about software being optimised for their machines...
Click to expand...

This is exactly my sentiment regarding the MBP and OS X.
After using the snappy iPad/iPhones in contrast to the sluggish and buggy Android devices, I thought the MBP and OS X would provide a similar experience if I'd switch from PC. I was dead wrong.
This poor software optimization reminds me of Windows ME/2000 or Windows Vista... and it surely isn't what I expected from a $1500 APPLE laptop.
It's baffling that my $800 samsung ultrabook from 2011 performs just as well. Maybe I expected too much.
I'm going to give the 15" a try but I'm not too optimistic at this point.
 
I think since the latest OSX El Capitan update, the window and lag issues are now gone. Awesome. Mac OS feels smooth and snappy the way it should.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Zakzilla
respectabilia said:
I think since the latest OSX El Capitan update, the window and lag issues are now gone. Awesome. Mac OS feels smooth and snappy the way it should.
Click to expand...
And it depends a little on the program you use as well. I've noticed that resizing any of the built-in apps doesn't show lag at all (unless I'm really pushing it). However, when I try this with Chrome it does lag noticeably. :p
 
  • Like
Reactions: respectabilia
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back