Retina MBP UI performance - with video

[davidmcguigan]

Have been programming, running heavy simulations, Windows + Linux in a VM, creating presentations and writing papers on it all day long. Its fast as hell.

I'd love to see that. What IDE are you on? I literally can't get around without hitting slowdown all the time. I've tried 3 different IDEs now and they all have issues, not to mention Chrome and Firefox's debugging tools just taking forever for any legitimate AJAX debugging.

Sure, some pictures might appear less detailed when contrasted with the sharp text, but I hardly see it as a problem. The image quality is still better then a regular screen.

No, you're dead wrong. Read any and/or every review on the Retina MBP. Apps ( the harsh minority at the moment ) that are revisited for Retina look better, but almost all other apps and images look worse. That's just factual. Browsing the web you can see it on pretty much every web page ( unless your eyesight is poor maybe ), including many of the pages on Apple.com ( they haven't updated them all with retina-savvy graphics yet ). Maybe you're sitting so far back that you can no longer see the detail in imagery is my best guess on how you can be not noticing it. I see it at any resolution on the Retina at all times and get giddy when a new app is updated to support retina, because for those that aren't: the visuals are much WORSE than on a regular MBP.

BTW, the attempts of personal insults in your post strangely contrast with your talk about 'being adult".

Oh I totally apologize then. You do realize that entire post was just a tit for tat for your original snide comment about the app store right?

 

[nontroppo]

Computational Neuroscientist who works in the field of visual perception here, use Matlab to run most computational models /analyses / generate graphics and program realtime psychophysical stimuli using an OpenGL wrapper (PTB), write papers in Scrivener, read PDFs, run some computational / statistical analyses in a Windows 7 VM (mostly generalised linear models and some optimisation in SPSS); using keynote as a pasteboard for large numbers of generated figures, use Illustrator for top-copy illustrations, manage references in Endnote (for my sins!), correspond with collaborators, research online etc etc. Relaxing time is working on photos in Lightroom, which is just amazing compared to my previous 15" 2010 MBP. I work on this every day without problems and with the significant benefits of beautifully crisp text. Programming OpenGL psychophysics stimuli (Matlab driving the Psychophysics toolbox) on it and I have no problems, there are drops in fps in the intermediate HiDPI modes by about ~50fps, but I still get >200fps even when in the "worst for performance" 1200p HiDPI mode.

@davidmcguigan: Perceptually you are simply incorrect that images are 1/4 resolution!!! The visual angles subtended by the rMBP pixels are much smaller, and the 2x scaling is effectively leaving the scaled pixel size as it was. Looking at the smilies on this reply box on my 2010MBP and rMBP next to each other and the rMBP is simply not unacceptably worse perceptually. The low DPI on my 2010MBP make the pixel boundries less "visible" than on the rMBP, but the effective information content is identical (see the attachment comparing cMBP and rMBP screenshots). The resampling has a visual effect of course, but your misuse of the term blurrier suggests a loss of visual information, which is simply, objectively untrue.

Your post is so full of overinflated insults, so short on specific information, and full of conceptual and perceptual misunderstandings, that it says more about you than those you deign to insult.

I am plenty pissed at Apple for destroying the solid engineering lead OS X used to have, for failing to upgrade the core FS, HFS+, for sheer neglect of those of us who require 10bit display output in a "professional" OS, for dumbing down a powerful OS in pursuit of social networking "features" that are basically self-centered navel-gazing for children. I am incredibly pissed at Apple at utterly neglecting workstation users, we are being severely hamstrung with old GPUs, terrible OpenGL performance, utterly outdated connectivity. This is a hardware disaster for professionals. But the childish tantrums because of the app store and some edge case websites in some browsers dropping occasional frames are far from the list of things to have a hissy fit over...

 

[nontroppo]

No, you're dead wrong.

No he isn't. See my screenshot above; then go and read about processing of spatial frequency information in the human visual system. Then try and wrap your head around the visual angles subtended by different pixel densities. Just because The Verge maybe said something in a review doesn't make it factually right.

 

[AZREOSpecialist]

No, you're dead wrong.

For someone so certain, you exhibit very little actual knowledge. Every website looks as good or better compared to a non-Retina Mac. I have one, I use it every day for work. Maybe you're the one with poor eyesight? LOL

 

[nontroppo]

Maybe you're the one with poor eyesight? LOL

He is probably just very susceptible to contextual processing, because the rest of the UI is so crisp and has objectively significantly higher information content (measure the spatial frequency content and you will see), the scaled images look perceptually worse than they actually are?

His other problems sound like some problem local to his software install; it seems the most parsimonious way to think that a lightweight web design IDE is causing him problems when others are doing much more computationally demanding work without problems.

 

[davidmcguigan]

Computational Neuroscientist who works in the field of visual perception here, use Matlab to run most computational models /analyses / generate graphics and program realtime psychophysical stimuli using an OpenGL wrapper (PTB), write papers in Scrivener, read PDFs, run some computational / statistical analyses in a Windows 7 VM (mostly generalised linear models and some optimisation in SPSS); using keynote as a pasteboard for large numbers of generated figures, use Illustrator for top-copy illustrations, manage references in Endnote (for my sins!), correspond with collaborators, research online etc etc. Relaxing time is working on photos in Lightroom, which is just amazing compared to my previous 15" 2010 MBP. I work on this every day without problems and with the significant benefits of beautifully crisp text. Programming OpenGL psychophysics stimuli (Matlab driving the Psychophysics toolbox) on it and I have no problems, there are drops in fps in the intermediate HiDPI modes by about ~50fps, but I still get >200fps even when in the "worst for performance" 1200p HiDPI mode.

@davidmcguigan: Perceptually you are simply incorrect that images are 1/4 resolution!!! The visual angles subtended by the rMBP pixels are much smaller, and the 2x scaling is effectively leaving the scaled pixel size as it was. Looking at the smilies on this reply box on my 2010MBP and rMBP next to each other and the rMBP is simply not unacceptably worse perceptually. The low DPI on my 2010MBP make the pixel boundries less "visible" than on the rMBP, but the effective information content is identical (see the attachment comparing cMBP and rMBP screenshots). The resampling has a visual effect of course, but your misuse of the term blurrier suggests a loss of visual information, which is simply, objectively untrue.

Your post is so full of overinflated insults, so short on specific information, and full of conceptual and perceptual misunderstandings, that it says more about you than those you deign to insult.

I am plenty pissed at Apple for destroying the solid engineering lead OS X used to have, for failing to upgrade the core FS, HFS+, for sheer neglect of those of us who require 10bit display output in a "professional" OS, for dumbing down a powerful OS in pursuit of social networking "features" that are basically self-centered navel-gazing for children. I am incredibly pissed at Apple at utterly neglecting workstation users, we are being severely hamstrung with old GPUs, terrible OpenGL performance, utterly outdated connectivity. This is a hardware disaster for professionals. But the childish tantrums because of the app store and some edge case websites in some browsers dropping occasional frames are far from the list of things to have a hissy fit over...

Stopped reading your post halfway through the first sentence ( I'm sorry, it was just insanely boring ), but took my Retina MBP and my Air around the office and showed a handful of people The Verge side by side... every single one made some comment about how much worse it looked. It's a consensus. Pretty much every review mentions it. It's something you can even see in an Apple Store for yourself, pull up the same web page side by side on a retina and on a non retina... it's blatant, obvious. We're talking about images, not text. The end.

 

[gentlefury]

Stopped reading your post halfway through the first sentence ( I'm sorry, it was just insanely boring ), but took my Retina MBP and my Air around the office and showed a handful of people The Verge side by side... every single one made some comment about how much worse it looked. It's a consensus. Pretty much every review mentions it. It's something you can even see in an Apple Store for yourself, pull up the same web page side by side on a retina and on a non retina... it's blatant, obvious. We're talking about images, not text. The end.

I've never looked at the verge before, but after todays update it is nice and smooth and looks perfectly fine. The end.

 

[millerrh]

I've never looked at the verge before, but after todays update it is nice and smooth and looks perfectly fine. The end.

So the 10.8.1 update fixed the lag?

 

[nontroppo]

...it's blatant, obvious... We're talking about image

It is "blatant" but magically disappears in the screenshot of non-retina content to which you "magically" failed to respond

 

[retinarob]

I'd like to see the activity monitor...

 

[davidmcguigan]

It is "blatant" but magically disappears in the screenshot of non-retina content to which you "magically" failed to respond

Sorry must've missed that. Which post are you referring to?

Also I apologize to everyone I was being overly rude to. My gf found out about my other gf Tuesday and it's been stressing me out pretty hard and I'm just being rude in general.

If you're talking nontroppo's screenshot, a screenshot won't prove or disprove anything as it'll be rendered and therefore experienced on the client device/screen doing the rendering. If you take a photograph with a camera with consistent distance from the two examples and all other variables being relatively equal, that would be a more legit demonstration of the difference in visual quality. I think alot of the reviews that I keep mentioning do that if you're curious to see what I'm talking about.

 

[gentlefury]

So the 10.8.1 update fixed the lag?

yes, it is buttery smooth now, just like facebook.

 

[davidmcguigan]

yes, it is buttery smooth now, just like facebook.

Are you on a 2.6? I just ran the update and I think it may be a bit smoother but not super noticeably so. Still feels choppy and netbooky to me.

 

[gentlefury]

Are you on a 2.6? I just ran the update and I think it may be a bit smoother but not super noticeably so. Still feels choppy and netbooky to me.

yes 2.6. And I'm driving 2 external displays.

 

[leman]

I'd love to see that. What IDE are you on? I literally can't get around without hitting slowdown all the time. I've tried 3 different IDEs now and they all have issues, not to mention Chrome and Firefox's debugging tools just taking forever for any legitimate AJAX debugging.

I use TextMate for most my programming needs. Its not a proper IDE of course and rather lightweight. I did try Xcode briefly though, didn't notice anything extraordinary.

No, you're dead wrong. Read any and/or every review on the Retina MBP. Apps ( the harsh minority at the moment ) that are revisited for Retina look better, but almost all other apps and images look worse. That's just factual.

This might be true. In particular, this is a problem with software that uses custom rendered controls.

Browsing the web you can see it on pretty much every web page ( unless your eyesight is poor maybe ), including many of the pages on Apple.com ( they haven't updated them all with retina-savvy graphics yet ). Maybe you're sitting so far back that you can no longer see the detail in imagery is my best guess on how you can be not noticing it. I see it at any resolution on the Retina at all times and get giddy when a new app is updated to support retina, because for those that aren't: the visuals are much WORSE than on a regular MBP.

This, I clearly disagree with. You are right that lower DPI of images is noticeable in contrast to the HiDPI text rendering if one looks clearly. If you are a web designer, you might be of course overly sensitive to these issues because you are conditioned to look for every small imperfection and visual inconsistency. What is really noticeable are images contained rendered text, they are just appear blurry most of the time (which is a psychological effect).
I am a very short-sighted person but my eyesight with glasses exceeds the norm (had a test with my new glasses just recently).

However, even low-DPI images usually look the same or superior on the rMBP. This is easy to see using test pictures. For instance, from this thread:

Well, let's not go far, how do those images look like on your rMBP:

Image 1:

Image

Image 2:

Image

Image 3:

Image

My retina MBP (in every resolution mode) is able to discriminate the patterns on these test images more clearly than the regular MBP, with higher contrast.

Of course, its not perfect. The patterns show that there is indeed some image filtering being used on the rMBP (probably artefacts from bilinear resampling). The results are "different" compared to the regular screen, but I don't see the rMBP loosing any details or introducing blur. This is most visible in the Safari browser BTW (it appears to do even weirder things to the image, maybe some additional post-filtering or resolution adjustments), when you open the patterns in a non-HiDPI aware editor like Seashore, they look better.

Oh I totally apologize then. You do realize that entire post was just a tit for tat for your original snide comment about the app store right?

Well, that's the price I pay for using irony Yet App Store is the only app with obvious UI problems in my experience. Resizing other UI-heavy apps (Xcode, iTunes) works very well. Xcode has some inertia to it, but it always had it (its the same on other computers). Safari could be a bit snappier though, it also feels a bit sluggish when resizing windows (my old MBP seems to do it slightly better).

 

[nontroppo]

If you're talking nontroppo's screenshot, a screenshot won't prove or disprove anything as it'll be rendered and therefore experienced on the client device/screen doing the rendering.

That is only partially correct, the screenshot captures the framebuffer, the actual content that is sent to the
display device. As my screenshot clearly shows, the same content information-wise is sent, so the term
"blurrier" is incorrect as to blur an image reduces information present. But lets say the display pixels then
do something horrible (even though they cannot as the display density is higher)! Even with a photo, it is
clear that the information content as it is, is preserved:

Taken with a Canon 550D + Olympus Zuiko 50MM macro lens at F3.5. Again it is clear the scaled content on
the rMBP is not "blurrier". You can see the resampling difference, although the relatively huge pixels on my
15" 2010 MBP do a far worse job of "blurring" the content.

Resampling can lead to aliasing, aka moiré, but no one I've seen is complaining of aliasing. I haven't seen in
either the Ars Technica review or the Anand review any clear evidence of "blurrier" images (NOT text). The
closest is the Safari vs. Chrome Canary image comparison here from Anand:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-review/6

Do you *really* see that as so much worse!?

Anyway to stop you having to read, CONCLUSION: you are incorrect about the display of scaled image on the rMBP.

 

[davidmcguigan]

God I hate this computer

2.3 Ghz 16 GB 256 GB SSD MacBook Pro Retina that can't really be used for professional tasks but works great as a web browser if you're not picky and are ok with using Safari.

Comes with an extra power adapter and thunderbolt ethernet dongle.

$2100

 

[davidmcguigan]

Wellll

Finally went into the Apple Store. The "genius" spent over an hour trying to fix it, saying it was "for sure, beyond any doubt just a software problem".

I let him go for a while, then told him to go use the ones on display. He did for about 15 minutes and then agreed that they all had the exact same issue and that it was bat **** crazy.

So, I ended up buying a brand new NON retina MBP to be able to get actual work done on. And am now dropping the price of my retina to $1750 if anyone's interested, haven't sold it yet. The end.

 

[davidmcguigan]

Oh god

THIS MACHINE IS SO FAST. IT'S SO MUCH FASTER THAN THE RETINA MAC. OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!

This is such a rush. Threw a 520 SSD in it and it's almost keeping up with me!!!

Here's what I find hilarious:

1. I can't get 16GB of RAM on the fastest MacBook Pro available.
2. I can get it on the laggy one.
3. I can't plug more than one monitor into the fastest MacBook Pro available.
4. I can plug 3 into the laggy one.
5. FML

Either way I'm happy to have a usable laptop again. Halle GD lujah.

 

[xdxdaustin]

I just thought I'd share that I was on 10.8.1 I could still see a minute amount of jitter, but rest assured it is 100% GONE in 10.8.2.

 

[cenixentor]

While Googling I found a tip regarding lagginess in Lion (not retina related) that suggested disabling System/Library/Extensions/AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext. Tried that, and it does make a noticeable different, albeit at the expense of additional heat and noise. It appears Apple very aggressively throttles the GPU to keep heat and fan noise down on the desktop. When I run xbench UI test (yeah, I know, xbench sucks) the numbers go from ~90 (with AGPM) to ~180 (without AGPM), so about double the performance.

It seems we only get full graphics performance with games that directly address hardware.

Note: I am running the GT650, not internal.

 

[davidmcguigan]

Nah

I just thought I'd share that I was on 10.8.1 I could still see a minute amount of jitter, but rest assured it is 100% GONE in 10.8.2.

Nah, my video was recorded with 10.8.2, a little bit better than it was but still totally unusable for my tastes at least.

 

[davidmcguigan]

Ughhh

Nah, my video was recorded with 10.8.2, a little bit better than it was but still totally unusable for my tastes at least.

No I was totally wrong, thinking of .0 to .1

Does it really?!?!? Don't lie to me my life depends on this haha.

I guess I can return it and re-buy the retina if they really solve the issue. That's cool. Just, you know, 3 or 4 months after they sell you the product.

 

[luffytubby]

I wonder if they can improve the performance further of the HD 4000 to make it less laggy. Anandtech said it was also the hardware that caused this sort of lag. Maybe there is nothing to do until a second generation?

 

[mjn298]

Finally went into the Apple Store. The "genius" spent over an hour trying to fix it, saying it was "for sure, beyond any doubt just a software problem".

I let him go for a while, then told him to go use the ones on display. He did for about 15 minutes and then agreed that they all had the exact same issue and that it was bat **** crazy.

So, I ended up buying a brand new NON retina MBP to be able to get actual work done on. And am now dropping the price of my retina to $1750 if anyone's interested, haven't sold it yet. The end.

I wish I'd found this sooner.. I am trying to unload my non-retina 15 for a Retina