Would the 2.6ghz model have a noticeable improvment with these sorts of things? "It's software" is nice to know when it comes to safari, but kind of makes me worry about 3rd party apps.
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New Macbook Pro (Retina) Laggy
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I've been using it for a bit now and I haven't noticed any lagging issues to speak of. I don't use safari though, so i can't speak to that...
I'm also not sure that I buy the argument that a N times greater number of pixels requires an N times more powerful gpu... I'm betting it's mostly a memory issue and it's really not much more costly cycle wise to render a an 8 pixel object vs a 2 or 4...
I'm also not sure that I buy the argument that a N times greater number of pixels requires an N times more powerful gpu... I'm betting it's mostly a memory issue and it's really not much more costly cycle wise to render a an 8 pixel object vs a 2 or 4...
I just had a play on the 15-inch: 2.3GHz Retina display MBP and there was NO lag in Safari in all the resolution options.
Apple Store Covent Garden has six on the table to play with. All looking pretty damn slick.
I have already ordered the new retina display and was hoping this thread was not true; so I tested it myself.
I went to the apple store around Noon today;
Played with Three Retina MBP's all machines were set as "default" resolution and were working very smooth and quick... as soon as I switched them to 1920x1200 the lag began... Anytime I would move safari's window I experienced excess lag... I reduced the size of the window down to see how web pages looked side-by-side and to my avail I noticed it very difficult to make them smaller because of the amount of lag issues...
I'm hoping this is just software related...
If it makes you feel any better, I was in Best Buy today and I played around on it for a solid 30 minutes @ 1920x1200 and I didn't notice any lag. I moved Safari around, resized, scrolled and everything else I could think of. There have been some reports on these forums about the Apple store software specifically causing issues. If you are still curious, I'd encourage you to try a best buy (or if you know someone that has one) and give it another shot.
I attempted to try the new retina MBP at my best buy however, they have yet to upgrade any of their systems... I'm going to wait for mine to come in... should be shipped by the end of this week....
There have been some reports that today's update to ML DP4 has improved the performance quite a bit for the non-native resolutions (most likely due to improved graphic drivers).
So, they're working on it. Hopefully by the end of next month, they should have everything fixed.
So, they're working on it. Hopefully by the end of next month, they should have everything fixed.
Macbook Pro Retina Owner
I can vouch for the "laggy" behavior of the Macbook Pro Retina when scaled at 1920x1200. My Girlfriend has a 27" iMac that is by all accounts extremely fast and utterly lag free in all operations. The lag I'm seeing definitely seems to be related to onscreen GPU accelerated animations, like exposing Launchpad, minimizing apps, etc. Any kind of onscreen animations seem to lag slightly including scrolling as others have mentioned. Other non GPU functions such as processing of images or video are not hindered by this behavior.
Currently, I am exchanging my Macbook Pro Retina because it has two cosmetic defects on the aluminum unibody. One on top just to the right of the right speaker grill and one along the bottom left edge. Apple was good about it although they asked me to take my computer into a store so they could look at it. That was an annoying and ultimately pointless detour.
I'm not worried about the lag one bit as these issues are certainly software related and have little to no effect on things like applying Photoshop filters, or software compiling.
I can vouch for the "laggy" behavior of the Macbook Pro Retina when scaled at 1920x1200. My Girlfriend has a 27" iMac that is by all accounts extremely fast and utterly lag free in all operations. The lag I'm seeing definitely seems to be related to onscreen GPU accelerated animations, like exposing Launchpad, minimizing apps, etc. Any kind of onscreen animations seem to lag slightly including scrolling as others have mentioned. Other non GPU functions such as processing of images or video are not hindered by this behavior.
Currently, I am exchanging my Macbook Pro Retina because it has two cosmetic defects on the aluminum unibody. One on top just to the right of the right speaker grill and one along the bottom left edge. Apple was good about it although they asked me to take my computer into a store so they could look at it. That was an annoying and ultimately pointless detour.
I'm not worried about the lag one bit as these issues are certainly software related and have little to no effect on things like applying Photoshop filters, or software compiling.
I don't buy that argument either because we have a 27" iMac in the house and the screen also has a boatload of pixels at 2560-by-1440. That computer is silky smooth in all operations. If the argument is going to be wait for faster hardware, it would only mean that Apple has grown lazy and doesn't want to properly support some of their highest paying customers...
I'm sure we'll all sort this issue out soon. I tested the MacBook Pro for about 25 mins and loaded lots of different sites, to make sure that there was no caching skewing the results and I can honestly say it was fine. And it was not the fastest processor.
If you want to see scroll lag, try using my PowerBook G4
Just been to Apple Covent Garden to have a look at one, and personally I can't see any lag in scrolling. Just to be clear though, are we talking about lag or flicker? The pages I scrolled did seem more flickery than my own MBP, but the initiation of the scrolling didn't have any lag that I noticed.
I tried the Apple website, a bunch of my own sites and one or two very image-heavy tumblr pages (I'm a web designer and wanted to see how things were looking on the new Retina), and generally scrolling seemed ok - a little flickery, but not laggy. However, more of an issue was pixelation of existing images - that's probably worth another thread, but lead me to theorise as to what's causing the lag/flicker for some.
I think what's happening (incidentally, I did a bit of googling to support this theory but can't find much that's conclusive) is that any graphics prepared at the traditional 72dpi are being interpolated to get them up to the required 220dpi for retina. This would mean processor and memory overheads are much higher than usual, and would also explain why a 27" iMac screen doesn't experience lag where as a rMBP does (allegedly). The fact that people on this thread are reporting that the problem seems related to image-heavy pages and not text-only pages further supports this.
If this is right, then possibly this is a problem that will go away in time, as web graphics are upscaled by designers to what will likely become the new screen dpi standard and hence don't need to be interpolated in real time.
I should stress this is purely my own speculation based on 20 minutes' playing in the Apple store and a further 15 minutes of pondering over a bacon sandwich. I'm keen to see what transpires over the next few months as more opportunities to test things arise, and would be interested if anyone has any thoughts on this.
I tried the Apple website, a bunch of my own sites and one or two very image-heavy tumblr pages (I'm a web designer and wanted to see how things were looking on the new Retina), and generally scrolling seemed ok - a little flickery, but not laggy. However, more of an issue was pixelation of existing images - that's probably worth another thread, but lead me to theorise as to what's causing the lag/flicker for some.
I think what's happening (incidentally, I did a bit of googling to support this theory but can't find much that's conclusive) is that any graphics prepared at the traditional 72dpi are being interpolated to get them up to the required 220dpi for retina. This would mean processor and memory overheads are much higher than usual, and would also explain why a 27" iMac screen doesn't experience lag where as a rMBP does (allegedly). The fact that people on this thread are reporting that the problem seems related to image-heavy pages and not text-only pages further supports this.
If this is right, then possibly this is a problem that will go away in time, as web graphics are upscaled by designers to what will likely become the new screen dpi standard and hence don't need to be interpolated in real time.
I should stress this is purely my own speculation based on 20 minutes' playing in the Apple store and a further 15 minutes of pondering over a bacon sandwich. I'm keen to see what transpires over the next few months as more opportunities to test things arise, and would be interested if anyone has any thoughts on this.
Maybe lag isn't quite the right word, the OS animations are not smooth all the time. Especially when exposing Launchpad or Mission Control.
From what I have read the reason for this lag/flicker in the animation performance is due to downsampling. OSX renders the screen at native res (2880x1800) then downsamples to your chosen retina scaling level, such as 1920x1080 which is then displayed across 2880x1800 pixels. It's that extra downsampling step that is the bottleneck I think.
I'm currently running the Chrom Retina Beta and scrolling is flawless. However, it appears that only the Chrome UI is Retina at this point, pages are still lower resolution.
I played with both rMBPs and the new Airs at my Apple Store - same issues. Very laggy. I was . My 2011 Air is WAY faster. That said, I AM running ML now and I did notice ML to boost Air's performance. But still, the laptops in Apple Store were ridiculously laggy. Safari was laggy on any resolution, although much less on the default one. Scrolling timeline in FinalCut - super laggy (although mousing over it to see live preview was super-fast). Scrolling Apps folder - laggy. Crazy. Yes, tried forcing to nVidia GPU on rMBP (without restart), didn't help, laptop just got warmer
I really, really hope it's a software issue where Lion just isn't very optimized for
retina good enough. Will wait till my friend's is shipped and we can put ML on it to test it before I buy mine.
. My 2011 Air is WAY faster. That said, I AM running ML now and I did notice ML to boost Air's performance. But still, the laptops in Apple Store were ridiculously laggy. Safari was laggy on any resolution, although much less on the default one. Scrolling timeline in FinalCut - super laggy (although mousing over it to see live preview was super-fast). Scrolling Apps folder - laggy. Crazy. Yes, tried forcing to nVidia GPU on rMBP (without restart), didn't help, laptop just got warmer I really, really hope it's a software issue where Lion just isn't very optimized for
retina good enough. Will wait till my friend's is shipped and we can put ML on it to test it before I buy mine.
I played with both rMBPs and the new Airs at my Apple Store - same issues. Very laggy. I was
Was your Air very laggy before you installed ML? If not, that pretty much confirms the performance you experienced were due to in store set up. It wouldn't make any sense that the new airs have gotten slower or laggy. They don't have the retina display.
I played with both rMBPs and the new Airs at my Apple Store - same issues. Very laggy. I was
I really, really hope it's a software issue where Lion just isn't very optimized for
retina good enough. Will wait till my friend's is shipped and we can put ML on it to test it before I buy mine.
The ones in the store more than likely wont have any of the updates installed on them so this could be a factor.
None of the "updates" will do anything until Mountain Lion. If there's any massive performance increase it won't be until then; every rMBP sold will get Mountain Lion for free, after all. The scrolling lag is going to suck until then, that's just life.
And yes, the lag is there and is really, REALLY bad. If you can't see it then something is wrong with your brain and you should just leave the discussion.
Not quite, but you've got the basic idea right. OS X (Quartz, really) renders the screen in HiDPI modes only, at double the "looks like" resolution listed in the Displays prefpane. So, the "Best for Retina" resolution is rendered at 2880 x 1800 and sent to the panel directly. The 1920 x 1200 mode is rendered at 3840 x 2400, and then scaled down to 2880 x 1800 and sent to the panel.
Waiting
I am one of the ones waiting for a 13". If Apple chooses to limit the graphics I may just forego retina and go with the MBA.
I am one of the ones waiting for a 13". If Apple chooses to limit the graphics I may just forego retina and go with the MBA.
I'm not trying to be rude, sorry. I just get so frustrated when I read impressions from people who have no idea what they're talking about. There are so many people like that on MacRumors.
I honestly think its not gonna happen this year unless Apple puts in a slower discrete GPU in there. Without the discrete GPU, there isn't much differentiation between that and the MBA 13" especially since its speculated that the roadmap will have all Macs to have Retina in the distant future. As we have observed with the MBPr, it needs significant GPU muscle to push those pixels especially when users will be power computing and use demanding apps. A MBP 13" with HD4000 might be able to handle light usage and browsing with Retina resolution but I'm having doubts it will perform smoothly if you throw in 1080p video editing or other demanding tasks while pushing 2560x1600. Just my 2 cents.
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Thanks for clearing that up.
Maybe you can answer this; how the heck does this work for the video editing demoed at the WWDC wherein 1920x1080 "pixel for pixel" video is displayed on screen? Is it truly "pixel for pixel"? Wouldn't it look soft like other non-retina images? If it's truly 1920x1080 *pixel for pixel* but scaled in the manner described(for retina), wouldn't it take up the whole screen since? Or is OSX somehow rendering the video pane at native and the rest of the screen "best for retina"?
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Excellent post, which I think explains the problem.
Everybody who has ever organized complex things knows very well that you can't control all details. Some have to be fixed in "post".
And I'm sure this issue will be fixed. All those who are going to buy the rMBP 4 to 6 weeks from now, will already get Mountain Lion with it, and the issue will very likely have disappeared.
Apparently it's not so simple. Anandtech just reviewed the RMBP and concluded even though ML would help alleviate the issue, he says ML won't be able to entirely eliminate it. At the end of the day, Apple's incredible screen is bumping up against hardware limits, and it's not like they could have used any other hardware to fix the issue. Things will slowly get better every coming year, but for now we have to accept the trade-off with having these incredible screens.