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OMG. Please reserve all judgement on rMBP until you see it in person.
- Thread starter Kendo
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mbpr
Hi,
I do not want to get in between all these passionate arguments. Quite frankly I find my self somewhere in the middle. I really like the thin body of the new macbook pro with retina display and for someone who was looking for a portable replacement of his desktop computer intended mainly for audio recording and production I wanted to get as powerful laptop as I could. So I got the top spec retina (2.7ghz processor, 16Gb ram and 750gb space). I know people here say one can upgrade the classic mbp to 16gb ram but I do not know about computers that much. As mentioned I mainly use it for recording apart of some internet browsing and so on. So if I buy a computer (laptop), for the money I'm spending I want to be set and ready to just do my work and not to worry about it no more or upgrade it.
Now, I find the retina mbp to be a very beautiful device and in many regards works just as I hoped for. Unfortunately I'm one of those people who's laptop suffers from certain leg or perhaps more sloppiness. The transition between main screens with nothing but wallpaper on is sloppy and static. Opening a simple things like notepad and resizing it over the whole screen isn't very smooth. Internet scrolling isn't the greatest either, altho that depends on what site I am on. I don't know, perhaps someone can say I may be asking too much. The computer is pushing soooo many pixels and so on. But to be honest what is the point if I can't get a smooth UI? This is already my third mac within a week. First had a hardware defect (rattling noise inside as if there was a lost screw) and the second felt too sloppy so I returned it again for a third one just to realise that perhaps this isn't an actual "problem" but just the character of this machine. Now I see some people here state that their machine doesn't suffer from not lag, sloppiness etc. at all. Is that really true? Because if that so I find the macbook pro with retina to be a great machine and I wouldn't regret spending $4000+ on it. But if not and this "laziness" is here to stay and would be on any machine no matter how many times I get it exchanged for a new one I'm afraid I might ending up just getting my money back. Therefor I feel a little confused. Everyone seems to be stating something different and I just want to find out is there a way to have a trully smooth macbook pro with retina just as I found the classic mbp's responsiveness or will the retina one be always sloppy because of the amount of pixels the hardware needs to push?
And lastly. As I stated I do not really now much about computer world and was wondering does it mean, that since this machine needs to work so hard to keep up with the displays picture that there isn't as much "juice" left for the actual recording programs I use which need quite a bit of power?
I hope this post isn't out of place in this forum, if so I apologise.
Thank You for Your time.
Hi,
I do not want to get in between all these passionate arguments. Quite frankly I find my self somewhere in the middle. I really like the thin body of the new macbook pro with retina display and for someone who was looking for a portable replacement of his desktop computer intended mainly for audio recording and production I wanted to get as powerful laptop as I could. So I got the top spec retina (2.7ghz processor, 16Gb ram and 750gb space). I know people here say one can upgrade the classic mbp to 16gb ram but I do not know about computers that much. As mentioned I mainly use it for recording apart of some internet browsing and so on. So if I buy a computer (laptop), for the money I'm spending I want to be set and ready to just do my work and not to worry about it no more or upgrade it.
Now, I find the retina mbp to be a very beautiful device and in many regards works just as I hoped for. Unfortunately I'm one of those people who's laptop suffers from certain leg or perhaps more sloppiness. The transition between main screens with nothing but wallpaper on is sloppy and static. Opening a simple things like notepad and resizing it over the whole screen isn't very smooth. Internet scrolling isn't the greatest either, altho that depends on what site I am on. I don't know, perhaps someone can say I may be asking too much. The computer is pushing soooo many pixels and so on. But to be honest what is the point if I can't get a smooth UI? This is already my third mac within a week. First had a hardware defect (rattling noise inside as if there was a lost screw) and the second felt too sloppy so I returned it again for a third one just to realise that perhaps this isn't an actual "problem" but just the character of this machine. Now I see some people here state that their machine doesn't suffer from not lag, sloppiness etc. at all. Is that really true? Because if that so I find the macbook pro with retina to be a great machine and I wouldn't regret spending $4000+ on it. But if not and this "laziness" is here to stay and would be on any machine no matter how many times I get it exchanged for a new one I'm afraid I might ending up just getting my money back. Therefor I feel a little confused. Everyone seems to be stating something different and I just want to find out is there a way to have a trully smooth macbook pro with retina just as I found the classic mbp's responsiveness or will the retina one be always sloppy because of the amount of pixels the hardware needs to push?
And lastly. As I stated I do not really now much about computer world and was wondering does it mean, that since this machine needs to work so hard to keep up with the displays picture that there isn't as much "juice" left for the actual recording programs I use which need quite a bit of power?
I hope this post isn't out of place in this forum, if so I apologise.
Thank You for Your time.
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sam. could you please repost with a few line breaks and paragraphs. Dont mean to sound rude, but its difficult reading your post. thanks.
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next please? what does that even mean? Are you the "greatness" tester with a line of hopefuls awaiting your blessing?
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btw, im assuming if you used it, youve seen it.
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next please? what does that even mean? Are you the "greatness" tester with a line of hopefuls awaiting your blessing?
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btw, im assuming if you used it, youve seen it.
mbpr
leman: yes, I'm using mountain lion. I've updated each retina laptop at the apple store while purchasing. It seems strange to me because with this last one I haven't noticed the lag in UI when just quickly played with it before updating to ML. But I know people say the opposite and it is ML that is suppose to make it run smoother
leman: yes, I'm using mountain lion. I've updated each retina laptop at the apple store while purchasing. It seems strange to me because with this last one I haven't noticed the lag in UI when just quickly played with it before updating to ML. But I know people say the opposite and it is ML that is suppose to make it run smoother
The next generation.
I just wasnt impressed.
Am I not entitled to an opinion?
Do we all have to believe the same as you?
That's one thing I actually prefer. I hate branding.
My only aesthetic complaint besides the screen not reaching the edge as closely as the 17" did, is that it doesn't come in black.
Tired of gray.
And now that everyone (especially HP) mimics the gray look, I really expected Apple to step it up and go darker.
Why light gray?
It's the worst color sky, worst color vehicle, worst color laptop.
oh christ. are you serious? you clearly don't know anything about graphics or how retina display works. i hope you're not trying to share this advice with anyone else.
obviously by shrinking an image down you are losing detail so you can't see individual pixels as well as you should. but this has NOTHING to do with retina display. when you move to a higher hidpi mode, that same image actually gets scaled UP even higher before getting scaled back down, thereby you are basically making an image look much worse before its appropriately displayed via scaling.
as a plain example, just go to the verge site and look at the logo. when you hit the other hidpi modes, it obviously just gets smaller and smaller, but its not getting "sharper" than what its supposed to look like at native res. and yes this has everything to do with how retina display works, not just how our eyes perceive detail.
wow. I dont mean to be rude, but youre really not as smart as you think you are.
Sorry buddy, but its you who has no idea about how graphics works. I have already tried to explain it to you several times, but it seems that you have a very selective attention. You just repeat nonsense, without giving any logical explanation whatsoever.
I'm still doing research on whether or not to get a retina since I really do not need it. I'd like to point out that of all the times I went into a store to check it out, I actually never noticed that the MBP branding was missing.
this coming from the person who couldn't even tell that logic pro wasn't retina optimized? if non-retina optimized UI's on a retina display 'look fantastic' to you, then you really need to get your eyes checked before spewing random crap on this forum.
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It's obvious from what you wrote above that you didn't read or understand my original post. The part that clearly shows you don't get it is this: "obviously by shrinking an image down you are losing detail." This shows you don't understand anything about the Retina display, scaling, or how it works with images. I'm not going to argue with you about this, it's obvious you're the only one who doesn't get it.
As an example, view any 640x480 image at 1440x900 "best for retina" resolution and then use SwitchResX to switch to full 2880x1800 resolution. The image will be half the physical size in this mode, but still showing 640x480 at a 1:1 pixel ratio. At 1440x900 best for retina resolution, that 640x480 image is being upscaled. Any image you view at anything less than full 2880x1800 resolution is being upscaled. Images always look sharper and best when they are displayed at 1:1 vs being upscaled.
According to your argument, as quoted above, viewing an image at 2800x1800 is displaying fewer pixels because the image is physically smaller on the screen, which is 100% wrong.
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Everyone,
I found a video on YouTube showing the lag I think people are discussing. This is on a 2.3 GHz version of the rMBP w/ 8 GB RAM:
http://youtu.be/uixeNzzJBXQ
I believe this person was using a screen recording program, so I'm not sure how much overhead that adds and whether that could skew the results of what you are seeing on screen.
I took an actual video recording of my screen using a DSLR, to eliminate any processing overhead that a screen recording application may add. I scrolled through George Takei's Facebook timeline, which has a lot of images and comments, as well as theVerge.com which showed the choppiest scrolling in the above video.
I quickly shot off this video using the automatic settings, I wasn't going for a technically perfect video, so please forgive those shortcomings. However, I think you will see when comparing both of these, I am experiencing nothing even remotely similar to what is shown in the first video.
http://youtu.be/p5OLbKCi3ok
The only discernible differences between my RMBP and the one in the first lag video is that mine is the faster 2.6 model with double the RAM (16 GB vs 8 GB). Both machines are on 10.8 Mountain Lion using Safari 6. The other thing I did differently was that I pre-loaded the web pages to eliminate any lag associated with page or image load time. This is not something that was done in the first video, and the lag seen in that video may have something to do with the fact that the pages and images were also loading while the pages were scrolled. Pure conjecture on my part.
So as you can see, I'm not making this stuff up. I just don't see the lag that others are seeing and experiencing.
the more I think about it, it's not the resolution. I say this because using it with the TB display at 1440p there is no choppiness. Also, even at 1800p there is no lag, just buttery smooth (and tiny hah). I don't believe there is a huge difference even between the "native" retina 900p or the scaled 1050p. It has to be software related.
I've seen it and loved it and now I bought it.
The text is so much better than anything else. It is so good and so amazing that I am changing my work environment to work exclusively on the rMBP and ditch my 24 inch monitor.
It's that good. the 15 inch size at first i didn't like, I am now loving and I love how thin it is. It is a work of art.
The text is so much better than anything else. It is so good and so amazing that I am changing my work environment to work exclusively on the rMBP and ditch my 24 inch monitor.
It's that good. the 15 inch size at first i didn't like, I am now loving and I love how thin it is. It is a work of art.
Same here. I noticed that the screen is so sharp that I'm using my external monitor less and less.
wow. did you not read a SINGLE thing i just said? i JUST said that non-retina optimized images have to be upscaled to display at the correct dimensions on retina screen, THUS why it looks fuzzier/blurrier. your idiotic argument was the fact that if you increased the resolution on retina display, images will become sharper. images do not become SHARPER. they are still fuzzy/blurry. i think what you're really trying to say is that non-retina images will just look slightly LESS fuzzy/blurry when moving up in resolution.
here. i'll quote you so you can look at it again and hopefully not try and embarrass yourself again in the future.
Looks like your'e a little too emotionally wrapped up in this. What is the difference between you saying images become "less fuzzy/blurry" and my saying they "appear sharper" when you increase the resolution of the display? You seem to be confusing sharpness with detail - they are two different things, after all. Is that why you are so upset?
@OP: Your post stuck in the back of my mind for a few days. Today, I went to an Apple Store and I must say that you are absolutely correct!
Nobody should judge the rMBP without having used it beforehand.
The display is mind blowing. Even all the glorious reviews around the web don't (and can't) make it justice. I find it even more eye-pleasing than the iPad 3rd gen (even viewing angles) like Anand noted, even though I was very skeptical. No idea why since the pixel density is much lower on the rMBP.
A few days ago, I was set on the rMBP, ordered it, then remembered from a 2011 MBP how frustrating it was to deal with graphics switching and ordered an MBA but didn't cancel the first order yet. I remembered the OP, held the final decision until having seen the rMBP in person and compared it with the Air.
I'm glad I did. I went back and forth between the two, comparing displays, battery lives, UI smoothness, weights, palm rests and wrist "cutting". The MBP wins on all fronts except for weight and UI smoothness. The choppiness is present, people haven't lied in these forums. However it's not as bad as some make it out to be. The only problematic areas I've seen so far: huge, loaded Facebook pages in Safari and mail threads (right pane) in Mail. Those were not all that smooth on the Air either, but better. However it's clearly all software. No further revision is going to fix this since the choppiness remains once on the beefier discrete GPU (read several times, not tested). Nothing to do with it being a Rev A as some like to say. The hardware looks and feels robust, ready to withstand years of abuse. Like the iPad 3rd gen, the first Retina revision, yet mine is flawless after 4.5 months. Apple got their stuff together, now more than ever.
There's still the question of the discrete GPU kicking in being bothersome and having to worry about which app triggered it. gfxCardStatus is neat, to say the least, especially its power-source-based switching feature, but some apps don't handle the switch well (VLC, as of a year ago; Flash videos; VM hypervisors; ...). Any GPU-tied app gets confused. So the tool is not ideal either. I'll try to let the OS switch away on its own and not worry about it, hoping for decent battery life. Seems like a small price to pay for the display quality.
One more important detail: for people like me, buried in Terminal all day, every day, let me tell you, white on black Terminal on the Retina display looks phenomenal. That was the icing on the cake after my previous tests: MBA order cancelled!
Nobody should judge the rMBP without having used it beforehand.
The display is mind blowing. Even all the glorious reviews around the web don't (and can't) make it justice. I find it even more eye-pleasing than the iPad 3rd gen (even viewing angles) like Anand noted, even though I was very skeptical. No idea why since the pixel density is much lower on the rMBP.
A few days ago, I was set on the rMBP, ordered it, then remembered from a 2011 MBP how frustrating it was to deal with graphics switching and ordered an MBA but didn't cancel the first order yet. I remembered the OP, held the final decision until having seen the rMBP in person and compared it with the Air.
I'm glad I did. I went back and forth between the two, comparing displays, battery lives, UI smoothness, weights, palm rests and wrist "cutting". The MBP wins on all fronts except for weight and UI smoothness. The choppiness is present, people haven't lied in these forums. However it's not as bad as some make it out to be. The only problematic areas I've seen so far: huge, loaded Facebook pages in Safari and mail threads (right pane) in Mail. Those were not all that smooth on the Air either, but better. However it's clearly all software. No further revision is going to fix this since the choppiness remains once on the beefier discrete GPU (read several times, not tested). Nothing to do with it being a Rev A as some like to say. The hardware looks and feels robust, ready to withstand years of abuse. Like the iPad 3rd gen, the first Retina revision, yet mine is flawless after 4.5 months. Apple got their stuff together, now more than ever.
There's still the question of the discrete GPU kicking in being bothersome and having to worry about which app triggered it. gfxCardStatus is neat, to say the least, especially its power-source-based switching feature, but some apps don't handle the switch well (VLC, as of a year ago; Flash videos; VM hypervisors; ...). Any GPU-tied app gets confused. So the tool is not ideal either. I'll try to let the OS switch away on its own and not worry about it, hoping for decent battery life. Seems like a small price to pay for the display quality.
One more important detail: for people like me, buried in Terminal all day, every day, let me tell you, white on black Terminal on the Retina display looks phenomenal. That was the icing on the cake after my previous tests: MBA order cancelled!
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