Retina MacBook Pro: no sign of a scroll lag

[mykelala01]

not a single one of these machines perform similarly. everyone thinks they are having the same experience, and each one is calling the other crazy. i know, because ive used two identical machines in two different stores and one stuttered like crazy and the other was smooth as butter.

so you have a guy at his house. with a machine thats running smooth, literally no stuttering. he reads a post by a guy who says "my machine stutters" and he gets upset because he thinks all these machines are identical and the other guy must be a troll.

meanwhile, the guy with the stuttering machine reads posts about how smooth the OTHER guys machine is, and in reality it is, and HE bugs out.. see what im getting at? nobody can get to the bottom of it. the only thing i can think of is theres some strange components that are different in some machines (sort of like the display panels, theyre not all the same), except this problem is actually causing lag.

i can see no other explanation as to why so many people are having such a wide array of conflicting reports on screen performance.

You got a point there. Exactly what my unibody Late 2008 Macbook pro rev A flickering issue. Some say they have it, some say they don't. Well what can you expect in a Rev A product. People are just piss that they spend almost $3,000 dollar on a half bake machine. And don't want to admit there is a problem. Apple needs to know, that this problem exist... so they can escalate the problem, and find a fix. Rather than judging people trolling or anything. Call your Apple representative or even call Apple customer relations before it is 3 years too late.

 

[a3vr]

Mine stutters on Facebook but none of the other "graphics intense" sites. Its a facebook issue as far as I'm concerned. As for the rest of the OS, there is some stuttering on window resizing but thats about it. Minimizing and maximizing windows is smooth. Going between full screens is smooth. And for those who say the graphics card is the issue, I disagree. If the iPad can handle 2560x1536 then a new ivy bridge computer should handle 2880x1800 without a problem.

Is it a big deal? No
Do I hope they get it improved? Yes
Do I still like my RMBP? Yes

 

[nickbarbs]

I've got to say that mountain lion update, setting the Dock menu to Hide, and changing documents/downloads to folder instead of stacks has made browsing on this machine much more pleasurable. I can zoom in and scroll pretty smooth which before on lion was basically impossible

I'm confident they can do even more optimisation for the software side.. i do hit some points that make the machine choppy but overall it is quite smooth and looks great on hidpi mode for 1680x1050

My eyeballs thank me every time i'm on this screen.. and it is true now other screens are ruined when you can see how big the pixels are (example is looking at an Ipad2 after all day on one of these)

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It is much much smoother now.. the more i use it the more i'm pleased. Once you start enjoying the 3d effects for zooming and bouncing you start focussing on other parts of the screen. Really a great product and i dont mind being a revision A tester here.. the speakers, cooling, etc is just fantastic.. All of this is the product of many years of engineering in the computing space. So while it's revision a.. my eyeballs thank me

 

[sireShonBohn]

Troll.... lol! Joke

Kidding aside

people who think you are not authentic and thinks that you are trolling. Just won't accept the fact there is a problem and it needs a fix real quick.

It's been largely fixed in Mountain Lion, I think you could say I'm a happy customer now. Still a little niggle with the UI performance here and there but it's much much better than Lion.

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Thank you for making this Grand Pronouncement. For most of my life I believed I was a computer professional. Geez, people even hire me for serious money as a cloud architect. Thanks to you, I now know that I am only a clueless troll. Has it come down to this? I fear I must now take my own life. Please. Down-vote me. I am not worthy anyway.

What a dolt.

Wow, for most of your life huh, you must be the only one who grew up using a computer. I mean, clearly YOU are the expert since you fancy yourself an "architect". But, why am I thinking of George Costanza right now?

Nothing is higher than architect
http://youtu.be/0DUPfQCvHXw

 

[Thors.Hammer]

not a single one of these machines perform similarly. everyone thinks they are having the same experience, and each one is calling the other crazy. i know, because ive used two identical machines in two different stores and one stuttered like crazy and the other was smooth as butter.

so you have a guy at his house. with a machine thats running smooth, literally no stuttering. he reads a post by a guy who says "my machine stutters" and he gets upset because he thinks all these machines are identical and the other guy must be a troll.

meanwhile, the guy with the stuttering machine reads posts about how smooth the OTHER guys machine is, and in reality it is, and HE bugs out.. see what im getting at? nobody can get to the bottom of it. the only thing i can think of is theres some strange components that are different in some machines (sort of like the display panels, theyre not all the same), except this problem is actually causing lag.

i can see no other explanation as to why so many people are having such a wide array of conflicting reports on screen performance.

That's actually a good observation. There are certainly many unknowns.

Like I told the Apple CS rep on the phone yesterday, "Mountain Lion had better improve the overall experience of OS X on the rMBP otherwise I am returning this puppy."

Thankfully, it did on my machine.

 

[Office Hours]

None of this makes any difference, sorry.

It makes a world of difference on my machine and the two others I helped setup for others. I'm 99.9% sure that you're full of it.

 

[wethackrey]

Wow, for most of your life huh, you must be the only one who grew up using a computer. I mean, clearly YOU are the expert since you fancy yourself an "architect".

Turns out, miracle of miracles, that people actually pay me as an architect. How cool is that?

But, why am I thinking of George Costanza right now?

My guess would be that you think about him a lot. Something about kindred spirits probably.

 

[leman]

i can see no other explanation as to why so many people are having such a wide array of conflicting reports on screen performance.

I think that some people are simply more sensitive to some issues and some people are just looking for problems. From my inspection of rMBP in the store — yes, there is some occasional lag on heavy websites and while mission-control switching among many windows/applications; but exactly the same kind of lag is present with any other Apple computer I know. And in all honesty, I don't see my experience hampered in any way if I have to wait 1/10 seconds more for mission control to kick in.

There was a similar thing with the iMac yellow screen issue. While the issue was clearly present in some displays, it was never as widespread as many would think. People were reading problem reports in internet and actively seeking the same issue with their machine - and of course they 'found' it. I did actually experiment with it by inviting my friends to inspect my machine and suggesting 'don't you think its got a yellowing issue in corner A'? Of course, they would see it, exactly were I pointed to, although areas I selected were totally arbitrary.

 

[PEN10k]

I went to the Apple store today to check out if the scroll lag I was reading about was something I should worry about.

Surprise: I couldn't create any scroll lag.

I had gone to Facebook (which was supposed to be the worst for the rMBP) - to the page of a photographer, plenty of images, but I did not experience any scroll lag.

Other than that: I loved the screen (it really blows you away if you don't fasten the seat belt -provided by the Apple Store), the sleek design, the whole, handsome package.

Sounds great, thanks! Then I'm not the only one.

 

[leenak]

I wasn't experiencing any lag on Lion and with an upgrade to ML, my experience is the same as with Lion. I'm glad some people saw an improvement with ML but it didn't change anything for me (but there wasn't anything to change)

 

[Hippocrates]

I can confirm that scrolling isn't buttery smooth on certain websites for my machine. It doesn't really affect my workflow and usually one doesn't pay special attention to it when you have work to do

I believe that some forummers have already posted before:
1) visit techcrunch.com, you may try this link: http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/25/os-x-mountain-lion-review/
2) pinch to zoom in, as much as you want
3) start scrolling and the lag is very noticeable

I've no idea whether this is a general problem with ML or just rMBP, but my Windows laptop scrolled just fine. This problem is apparent in Facebook or Google+ too, as long as the page contains lots of photos and videos. Zoom the page in and the lag increases.

 

[stevelam]

I've got to say that mountain lion update, setting the Dock menu to Hide, and changing documents/downloads to folder instead of stacks has made browsing on this machine much more pleasurable. I can zoom in and scroll pretty smooth which before on lion was basically impossible

I'm confident they can do even more optimisation for the software side.. i do hit some points that make the machine choppy but overall it is quite smooth and looks great on hidpi mode for 1680x1050

My eyeballs thank me every time i'm on this screen.. and it is true now other screens are ruined when you can see how big the pixels are (example is looking at an Ipad2 after all day on one of these)

----------

It is much much smoother now.. the more i use it the more i'm pleased. Once you start enjoying the 3d effects for zooming and bouncing you start focussing on other parts of the screen. Really a great product and i dont mind being a revision A tester here.. the speakers, cooling, etc is just fantastic.. All of this is the product of many years of engineering in the computing space. So while it's revision a.. my eyeballs thank me

Just another case of "i read this on the internet and now im gonna spew the same thing regardless of whether its true or not!" nonsense. In your case you didnt even get that right.

Already you know this a complete BS post because the whole 'hiding dock/changing to folders instead of stacks' has absolutely nothing to do with browsing smoothness. It only addressed the annoying lag on switching spaces.

 

[jasonx2]

I have a base model rmbp on hand and after upgrading to ML, the lag issue is completely gone in most websites except Facebook. So i can tell you that no need to worry about this problem anymore

 

[ssn637]

I can confirm that scrolling isn't buttery smooth on certain websites for my machine. It doesn't really affect my workflow and usually one doesn't pay special attention to it when you have work to do

I believe that some forummers have already posted before:
1) visit techcrunch.com, you may try this link: http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/25/os-x-mountain-lion-review/
2) pinch to zoom in, as much as you want
3) start scrolling and the lag is very noticeable

I've no idea whether this is a general problem with ML or just rMBP, but my Windows laptop scrolled just fine. This problem is apparent in Facebook or Google+ too, as long as the page contains lots of photos and videos. Zoom the page in and the lag increases.

I just tried scrolling through that page on my MacBook Pro 2010 13" 2.66 GHz model after zooming in and there was a noticeable lag in Mountain Lion. Not trying to claim that the newer rMBP shouldn't be experiencing these issues but perhaps your expectations are just too high with the current integrated GPU?

 

[Hippocrates]

I just tried scrolling through that page on my MacBook Pro 2010 13" 2.66 GHz model after zooming in and there was a noticeable lag in Mountain Lion. Not trying to claim that the newer rMBP shouldn't be experiencing these issues but perhaps your expectations are just too high with the current integrated GPU?

Well, I wouldn't be too surprised though considering the sheer amount of pixel rMBP has to render, but I would be disappointed as I tend to convince myself that the newer CPU/GPU is more capable than that in my 4 years old Thinkpad which scrolled without visible lag. Again, that's not a fair comparison too as my Thinkpad's display is only 1280 x 800

Anyway, I always thought that dedicated GPU will kick in when needed. So you are sure that scrolling in heavy webpages doesn't trigger dedicated GPU? If so, perhaps Apple should give the OS more freedom to utilise the dGPU, especially when the laptop is on power adaptor.

 

[Woodcrest64]

Can someone with a Retina MacBook Pro try this with Mountain Lion?

Place the application folder on your dock if it isn't there. Then try opening it once and see if there is any lag. If you do it more than once the lag goes away.

If you wait a minute or two and do it again you should notice a little lag but nothing again if you do it a second or third time.

Also try flipping pages in iCal and see if its laggy.

I'm just wondering if anyone else experiences this. That's only lag I can see left in OSX with the rMBP. Now I didn't do a clean install. I installed directly installed ML on top of Lion but did it as soon as I opened my RMBP from the box. So I'm not sure if its because of this or not.

 

[terraphantm]

Can someone with a Retina MacBook Pro try this with Mountain Lion?

Place the application folder on your dock if it isn't there. Then try opening it once and see if there is any lag. If you do it more than once the lag goes away.

If you wait a minute or two and do it again you should notice a little lag but nothing again if you do it a second or third time.

Also try flipping pages in iCal and see if its laggy.

I'm just wondering if anyone else experiences this. That's only lag I can see left in OSX with the rMBP. Now I didn't do a clean install. I installed directly installed ML on top of Lion but did it as soon as I opened my RMBP from the box. So I'm not sure if its because of this or not.

Neither task appears laggy to me (maybe Calendar, but I've never used it before so I don't know what it's supposed to look like on a different mac). I did set my downloads folder to display as a folder rather than as a stack though (some have noted that there seems to be a bug with "stack" that causes lag throughout the system)

 

[Meever]

Maybe some people are more acute to the problem. I personally envy those individual who cannot detect the obvious lag.

I want to keep mine so bad but this lag is unacceptable for a 2k+ computer in this day and age.

I'm getting my money back.

 

[flipnap]

Maybe some people are more acute to the problem. I personally envy those individual who cannot detect the obvious lag.

I want to keep mine so bad but this lag is unacceptable for a 2k+ computer in this day and age.

I'm getting my money back.

if you exchange it for another one, same model and specs it might run smooth as butter. nobody seems to know why. seriously

 

[Woodcrest64]

I ended up removing the flip animation in the iCal app. So now there is no animation and just goes through the months like butter I didn't care for the animation anyways.

As for the application folder on the dock... I removed it and just use launch pad which is smooth and faster.

Everything else is pretty quick.

 

[terraphantm]

Maybe some people are more acute to the problem. I personally envy those individual who cannot detect the obvious lag.

I want to keep mine so bad but this lag is unacceptable for a 2k+ computer in this day and age.

I'm getting my money back.

Oh trust me, I am very sensitive to that kind of thing. Minor framerate changes bug the hell out of me. The lag is not there in 95% of situations. The few situations where it is present are fairly minor.

I did notice that the lag does increase noticeably when my battery is running low (< 10%) - perhaps the iGPU clocks itself down even more?

 

[wethackrey]

Maybe some people are more acute to the problem. I personally envy those individual who cannot detect the obvious lag.

I want to keep mine so bad but this lag is unacceptable for a 2k+ computer in this day and age.

I'm getting my money back.

I just, for the first time, noticed a lag in Mountain Lion on my MBPr. It looks like it was caused by memory constraints. I had two VMWare VMs running, both set to use 4GB of ram and, I was rather embarrassed to learn, had nineteen apps running. Word, Excel, Mail, Calendar, Yojimbo, NetBeans, Photoshop CS6, Firefox with a dozen windows, Safari, Sonicwall NetExtender, a startup sound suppressor app I was testing for someone in another thread, Apple Remote Desktop, Windows Remote Desktop, Terminal, Contacts, App Store, BBEdit and two instances of Quicktime Player 7.

I killed VMWare and Photoshop and voilà, no lag. This is still anecdotal, of course, but it sure seems related to memory, though I suppose I may have been overtaxing the CPU as well. Each VM was set to use one core, leaving two for MacOS. Time to look more closely at Activity Monitor and try it again.

Evidently I've gotten a bit cocky, thinking 16GB of memory means I never have to quit an application. I realize that you guys who are having lag issues aren't being as boneheaded as this when you're seeing the symptoms. It's an interesting clue though.

It would be useful to know how many folks who've experienced UI lag have 16GB of memory.

 

[Lvivske]

It makes a world of difference on my machine and the two others I helped setup for others. I'm 99.9% sure that you're full of it.

Yeah, I'm lying. Go mess yourself, pal.


Having said that....version 21.0.1180.57 is smooth as butter for me now. Had to disable per-tile painting though, that's a horrible thing to have turned on.

 

[sofianito]

if you exchange it for another one, same model and specs it might run smooth as butter. nobody seems to know why. seriously

Someone claimed in another thread that he received a maxed rMBP (2.7Ghz, 16GB RAM, 768GB SSD) after complaining to Tim Cook about the 3 defective cMBPs exchanges he received. If this happened with a cMBP then expect much more with 3 defective exchanges of rMBP .

There are a lot of cock-and-bull stories in here...

 

[samanuel]

static screen transition

Hi,
I've been following this thread for few days now as I just bought a new rmbp a week ago. Unfortunately, I had to already return it twice. First time there was a rattle inside the body somewhere under the right speaker grilled and everytime I'd tilt the machine it would make sound as if there is a loose screw. The second one seemed to be quite sloppy and the transition between screens very static. Unfortunately when I got this last one, the static transitions and sloppiness seems to stay. When I was setting it up at the shop with Apple's "specialist" and showed him he went and tried all other rmbp they had and they all seemed to have this problem. The original mbp seems to be very smooth next to this one. He then told me that I could either take this home, try it for two weeks and if I still find it doesn't work as should I could take it back and they'll open few other rmbp and see if they'll be any better.
Now, I'm just not sure if this is truly something "normal", that all new rmbp suffer from or just few. What I mean is for example when You swipe between the main screens with nothing but the wallpaper on them, it seems quite static or shaky. But if You open some app or window on it it seems much smoother. Also for example if You open the notes app and then resize the window to cover the whole screen, that transition seems very sloppy too. I know many people say that is the price to pay for such a high resolution but I just don't feel that it justifies overall sloppiness of the laptop. What worth is great resolution if the notebook's performance feels like a much weaker and older laptop. Especially when I paid over 4thousand for the top spec model.
So is this truly a problem of all rmbp laptops and if so, would it be fixed in the future by a software update or is there just some that suffer from this and others that run completely smooth?