Just came back from testing it out in store.
We got some demo units from today in South Africa with the local official apple reseller, iStore. No stock for sale in stores, only online pre-orders. Staff have no idea when stock will arrive. Guess that's the norm. Apparently first deliveries end of month (unofficial).
My morning newspaper (in pressreader online) shows massive lag when zoomed in (to any level) - here's a short video.
I cannot confirm if this is the rMB failing to keep up with the screen re-draw/refresh needs or simply poor Safari performance in general - perhaps someone with a rMBP can try zooming into any article at "http://businessday.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx" and report back.
https://youtu.be/GZ-mYYVST0g
My Surface Pro 3 and IE11/Chrome handle the same test without any issues. Smooth no matter how much zoom is applied.
Other than that, here are my observations:
- keyboard is wonderful to touch type on. Weird, but wonderful
- size is stunning in real life, Apple design at its best (although for a price)
- retina screen, amazing. Better than my Surface Pro 3 which I had side by side in the store.
- force touch, might take some getting used to but worked for me. Intuitive and consistently even "clickiness" on all extremes of the touchpad
- Screen colours seemed vivid, reviews have confirmed this
- Demo unit had some wobble. Perhaps manhandled by staff, base was not entirely flat.
- There was some UI lag. Turning transparency off helped improve things. I suspect it's OSX related and apple can fix this, as it was inconsistent. Like others have shown, when switching spaces etc it can drop frames. Definitely noticeable. Deal breaker ? Probably not.
Super little laptop. Not sure if I'm giving up my SP3 as a daily driver just yet though.
We got some demo units from today in South Africa with the local official apple reseller, iStore. No stock for sale in stores, only online pre-orders. Staff have no idea when stock will arrive. Guess that's the norm. Apparently first deliveries end of month (unofficial).
My morning newspaper (in pressreader online) shows massive lag when zoomed in (to any level) - here's a short video.
I cannot confirm if this is the rMB failing to keep up with the screen re-draw/refresh needs or simply poor Safari performance in general - perhaps someone with a rMBP can try zooming into any article at "http://businessday.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx" and report back.
https://youtu.be/GZ-mYYVST0g
My Surface Pro 3 and IE11/Chrome handle the same test without any issues. Smooth no matter how much zoom is applied.
Other than that, here are my observations:
- keyboard is wonderful to touch type on. Weird, but wonderful
- size is stunning in real life, Apple design at its best (although for a price)
- retina screen, amazing. Better than my Surface Pro 3 which I had side by side in the store.
- force touch, might take some getting used to but worked for me. Intuitive and consistently even "clickiness" on all extremes of the touchpad
- Screen colours seemed vivid, reviews have confirmed this
- Demo unit had some wobble. Perhaps manhandled by staff, base was not entirely flat.
- There was some UI lag. Turning transparency off helped improve things. I suspect it's OSX related and apple can fix this, as it was inconsistent. Like others have shown, when switching spaces etc it can drop frames. Definitely noticeable. Deal breaker ? Probably not.
Super little laptop. Not sure if I'm giving up my SP3 as a daily driver just yet though.