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Initial Impressions - 13" rMBP
- Thread starter pogiboi
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I wish I could say the same about my 2010 MBA 11" -- I'm a scientist and so I live with pdf journal files. I've used my colleague's 15" rMBP and *sometimes* get lag when scrolling large pdfs, but the quality of the pdf itself can be a large factor. I've loved the portability of the 11", but my aging eyes do not love that screen any more.
I think any lag is a trade-off for the rMBP models. I'm heading to the local Apple store later to try a similar test, but I am not willing to go to the weight of the regular MBP 13" and the 13" MBA screen is just not close.
Damn. My Pro 13 Mid-2012 had better results than this guys retina
http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/1201849
http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/1201849
Your point is well taken -- I often have to use Adobe for security/markup reasons, but I am careful to *not* make it the default. I should try the test with both.
Do please do so and let us know how it went.
I'm on a late 2011 15" cMBP and if I open large PDF files in Adobe Acrobat Professional, lag is noticeable ( using the "Fit to window width and enabled scrolling" option ), whereas in Preview, things are smooth. NOTE: Both sometimes stutter for a moment after the load and initial scroll ( usually when the first pages contains some large graphics - most likely due to some heavy processing spike )... but become "normal" afterward ( no more stuttering I mean ).
On the 2011 cMBP I use at work, Preview lags so much on large PDF files that it can take up to 2 seconds just to flip a page. With rMBP, no such issues. The docs I'm using are internal technical references which are anywhere between 1000 and 5000 pages long. Some of them were created with his res images (big mistake IMHO) and are up to 450Mb in size. Mixed text, graphics, photos, network layouts, wiring diagrams, daughterboard layouts, etc... You name it and we've got it. Obviously, the cMBP is stock, so that explains the issue (given the crappiness of some of the documents). Howeve, no issues on the rMBP... It's just a breeze. I usually am reading these documents whilst running 3 VMs in the background including one hosting an Oracle database with 750,000 records. All this is used for regression testing, quick patches, and tweaking of stored procedures. It's just such a pleasure to use a portable lab. Before I had to remote in and connect to some shared labs, but you could be sure that someone had left the lab in an unusable state. I hardly ever use the cMBP my employer bought for me any more. The rMBP makes my life so much easier it's just incredible. Worth every last penny. Wouldn't give it away at gun point.
For those of you looking for a keyboard cover for their new 13" rMBP, I highly recommend this. It's on sale right now for $7.99. Fit's perfect.
http://www.amazon.com/Uppercase-Ult...id=1351286712&sr=8-10&keywords=macbook+retina
http://www.amazon.com/Uppercase-Ult...id=1351286712&sr=8-10&keywords=macbook+retina
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
All regular sized drives will stick out. You want to get one of these:
http://theniftyminidrive.com/
For all who are interested, after about 10 hours of use, I've decided to return my 13" rMBP. If you check the link in my signature I gave some initial impressions from when I received the computer yesterday morning, but as time has gone on I've realised that the Intel HD4000 is not capable of driving the display to an acceptable standard.
Having looked at the non-Retina 13" and the Retina 15" side-by-side I think the size difference is small enough to warrant going for that. I will be purchasing the base model 15" with Retina Display in the next few days.
Having looked at the non-Retina 13" and the Retina 15" side-by-side I think the size difference is small enough to warrant going for that. I will be purchasing the base model 15" with Retina Display in the next few days.
So vague... Mind to explain? What did you actually "discover"?
Your blog post is more on the funny than informative / helpful side.
For all who are interested, after about 10 hours of use, I've decided to return my 13" rMBP. If you check the link in my signature I gave some initial impressions from when I received the computer yesterday morning, but as time has gone on I've realised that the Intel HD4000 is not capable of driving the display to an acceptable standard.
Having looked at the non-Retina 13" and the Retina 15" side-by-side I think the size difference is small enough to warrant going for that. I will be purchasing the base model 15" with Retina Display in the next few days.
You will probably be more disappointed with the 15 inch, which has even more pixels to push with the same HD4000. Unless you are planning on running with the nvidia GPU on full time, and living with the drastically reduced battery life.
Perhaps vague, but I am not interested in what tests tell me - I'm interested in what something is like to use. Flash video is bad; mouths move out of sync with the video. It seems to be skipping lots of frames to keep up. Of course this could be the fault of Adobe, but the problem of skipped frames (although not so bad) is also evident when viewing 1080p video through MPlayerX. As someone mentioned previously on this thread, scrolling on The Verge is very laggy/choppy. However, that problem also presents itself on some websites that I don't consider to be particularly intensive such as BBC News and - when other tabs are open - even Reddit. If something else, such as using YouTube, minimising a window is done in about 5 frames.
I am not a heavy user by any means, but having looked forward to this computer since rumours of the 15" Retina Display began circulating, I'm just quite disappointed that Apple have ignored such an obvious failing with the graphics.
Maybe if you were coming to this computer from older hardware these issues might not pose a problem, but I have become used to everything happening smoothly on an operating system, and don't feel comfortable using a computer where the mouse framerate drops while watching 1080p video. It's definitely not bad, but it's just not good enough for the money.
Edit: All the experiences I have had are running the display at 1680x1050. Running it at the default resolution of 1280x800 might yield better results, but I purchased the rMBP to run at a high resolution.
I doubt that Flash video-audio unsync has to do with the HD4000 or the machine itself. Did you try other websites? Maybe the movies you were watching are messed up or the video player on that certain website ( YouTube has a crappy player written by some quite incompetent folk - I'm saying this because I've been working with the technology for the past 7+ years and in contrary to many others, I have the "Debugger Flash Player" installed on all my machines... meaning that the player catches and displays all runtime exceptions - the number of exceptions I see on a daily basis - on almost all websites - has stopped being funny a looong, loooong time ago )...
As for the scrolling... sorry, but I just have to ignore that part. Why? Because both The Verge and BBC news stutter sometimes ( due to the number of graphical assets that need to be rendered ). I'm running on a 15" cMBP ( late 2011 )... even this model shows stuttering ( in Safari ), then expecting a weaker computers to be smoother is just silly.
I can't comment on the 1080p video skipping issue much... did you try using a different player? Like VLC perhaps? I mean, if cMBP 13" and MBA can play stuff using the HD4000, then there's really hard to believe that the rMBP 13" is that much worse and it's skipping frames. Are you using it on native resolution or scaled? Cause if you're using it on a scaled resolution, that could explain the performance loss ( scaling isn't free you know ). Also, it's a 13" computer... I don't really understand why you feel the need to watch 1080p content on that small size... isn't 720p enough? You can't spot the flees on animals at 720p, can you?
Anyway, it's your call... All I'm saying is that you're observations seems extremely subjective and your decision is not well founded / motivated. But sure, if you don't like it and you feel it doesn't meet your standards, then back it goes... hope you'll be happier with the 15" rMBP.
As for the scrolling... sorry, but I just have to ignore that part. Why? Because both The Verge and BBC news stutter sometimes ( due to the number of graphical assets that need to be rendered ). I'm running on a 15" cMBP ( late 2011 )... even this model shows stuttering ( in Safari ), then expecting a weaker computers to be smoother is just silly.
I can't comment on the 1080p video skipping issue much... did you try using a different player? Like VLC perhaps? I mean, if cMBP 13" and MBA can play stuff using the HD4000, then there's really hard to believe that the rMBP 13" is that much worse and it's skipping frames. Are you using it on native resolution or scaled? Cause if you're using it on a scaled resolution, that could explain the performance loss ( scaling isn't free you know ). Also, it's a 13" computer... I don't really understand why you feel the need to watch 1080p content on that small size... isn't 720p enough? You can't spot the flees on animals at 720p, can you?
Anyway, it's your call... All I'm saying is that you're observations seems extremely subjective and your decision is not well founded / motivated. But sure, if you don't like it and you feel it doesn't meet your standards, then back it goes... hope you'll be happier with the 15" rMBP.
I doubt that Flash video-audio unsync has to do with the HD4000 or the machine itself. Did you try other websites? Maybe the movies you were watching are messed up or the video player on that certain website ( YouTube has a crappy player written by some quite incompetent folk - I'm saying this because I've been working with the technology for the past 7+ years and in contrary to many others, I have the "Debugger Flash Player" installed on all my machines... meaning that the player catches and displays all runtime exceptions - the number of exceptions I see on a daily basis - on almost all websites - has stopped being funny a looong, loooong time ago )...
As for the scrolling... sorry, but I just have to ignore that part. Why? Because both The Verge and BBC news stutter sometimes ( due to the number of graphical assets that need to be rendered ). I'm running on a 15" cMBP ( late 2011 )... even this model shows stuttering ( in Safari ), then expecting a weaker computers to be smoother is just silly.
I can't comment on the 1080p video skipping issue much... did you try using a different player? Like VLC perhaps? I mean, if cMBP 13" and MBA can play stuff using the HD4000, then there's really hard to believe that the rMBP 13" is that much worse and it's skipping frames. Are you using it on native resolution or scaled? Cause if you're using it on a scaled resolution, that could explain the performance loss ( scaling isn't free you know ). Also, it's a 13" computer... I don't really understand why you feel the need to watch 1080p content on that small size... isn't 720p enough? You can't spot the flees on animals at 720p, can you?
Anyway, it's your call... All I'm saying is that you're observations seems extremely subjective and your decision is not well founded / motivated. But sure, if you don't like it and you feel it doesn't meet your standards, then back it goes... hope you'll be happier with the 15" rMBP.
I've tried to stay away from saying it's a bad computer, because I don't think it's bad, it's just not sufficiently good to warrant the price for me. And there's the key thing with this - I'm not trying to suggest other people shouldn't buy it, because everything I've experienced is very much anecdotal and thus the resulting problems I have are subjective.
The comparison I have used throughout is a 13" MacBook Pro over 18 months old and with an inferior graphics card (although better processor). It is just unacceptable to me that this machine is not able to match that performance. I can view 1080p video just fine on that machine with no issue; I rarely get stuttering on websites; Flash video is almost always smooth.
Since my post in this thread earlier this morning I have been trying the display running at the native resolution, and I must say, things are significantly smoother. The issue with Flash is still present, but general lag does seem to be reduced. I hope that can be of some use to others, but I don't want to run the display at the native resolution.
Sure... Although your goal is not to tell others what to get or not, the fact that you got one and decided to send back without shedding some light on the reasons behind your decision could still send the wrong message to some users.
That's why I asked that you shed some light on your decision... if it's in the end just subjective and has not much / nothing to do with hardware issues ( defective screen or similar ), then that's already helpful. Each user should see for himself and decide afterward if it's worth the purchase ( if it lives up to his expectations ). Cheers!
PS: Could you link us to one of those videos that loses sync?
What Flash Player version are you using? Under what browser?
I'm curious to check it out myself...
That's why I asked that you shed some light on your decision... if it's in the end just subjective and has not much / nothing to do with hardware issues ( defective screen or similar ), then that's already helpful. Each user should see for himself and decide afterward if it's worth the purchase ( if it lives up to his expectations ). Cheers!
PS: Could you link us to one of those videos that loses sync?
What Flash Player version are you using? Under what browser?
I'm curious to check it out myself...
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Be careful not to let this go into the wrong direction. While it may be possible to find different software for certain tasks, like different PDF readers or video players, that performs better: This is a very expensive computer. And no one should have to adapt themselves and their workflow to their computer, just to complete the most simple tasks sufficiently well.
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While what you are saying is partially true... bad software is still bad software. It doesn't matter how expensive a computer is... software can be written to fail or malfunction on 12 core CPUs too with 4 SLI GPUs.
I'm not saying we should start using minimalist stuff so that the rMBP won't struggle, all I'm saying is that just because it's expensive, it doesn't mean it was built to perform 100x better than cheaper alternatives... nor can it handle everything one throws at it ( "use the right tools for the right job" ).
The majority of people don't buy expensive watches because the watch tells time better than the cheaper alternatives... they buy such watches because of totally different reasons ( like: "build quality, personalization, service / support and of course bragging rights"... + more ). Kinda the same applies for Apple products.
Just because you see many people on a forum causing a fuss about the LG screens DOESN'T mean there's an issue with majority of the LG screens - or an issue that people would ever notice with normal usage.
The fact is we have no hard data (meaning not from internet polling that's strongly biased by people who had poor experiences) on what percentage of machines have what displays - and the percentage of each machine that has been returned for display issues.
I often hear, on here, of people returning LG screens for IR issues (I have an LG screen, have for several months - absolutely ZERO issues and it's stunning), but I also keep hearing about issues with dead pixels, blacklight bleeding, whatever.
One solution for the scroll lag is just to run the display at its native 2560x1600 using a third-party app. I run my 15" mbpr at 2880x1800 and there is never any scroll lag on the HD4000. It seems small at first, but you quickly grow used to the increased screen real estate.
You can't be serious?
It's readable, but I can't imagine wanting to use a resolution that high on a 13" screen. I didn't notice any difference in the scrolling, but I can imagine there would be some improvement.