Thinking about returning Retina MacBook Pro

[MikesGravity]

Since you guys are having the same issue, can you try something for me?

Example: Open Safari (Fullscreen), iTunes (Full Screen), Mail (Full Screen) and maybe one other app.

Swipe up to reveal whatever the hell they call this these days, where you can see the row of apps or (windows) open on top, desktop in middle and dock below. I'm sure you have all had some stuttering here.

What I am curious about is... click one of the open apps at the top to have it come up. Right after you hit the app, before it opens full screen does the thumbnail icon at the top have a slight black flash? Try it a few times with a few apps. It happens sometimes, you hit it, it flashes black kind of, then comes flying at you full screen. I can't remember my 13" mbp doing that.

 

[blipmusic]

Perhaps I have the same lag without noticing but just in case: have you tried resetting the SMC?

It has helped me out a few times when I play the occasional game and get sudden frame rate drops that stay low for no apparent reason or just much lower performance than usual (as if the discrete gpu doesn't kick in even if it reports being active).

Sorry if I missed someone having posted this already.

 

[Ploki]

Fyi, retina display is doing the scaling, therefore it's using much more GPU power than any other display.

RETINA is doing scaling IF you pick any of other modes than native mode. that is, HiDPI native...
If you use ScreenResX you can even run other modes without scaling. so that's ********...

 

[leman]

Swipe up to reveal whatever the hell they call this these days, where you can see the row of apps or (windows) open on top, desktop in middle and dock below. I'm sure you have all had some stuttering here.

Yep, it stutters because the OS does not seem to cache the window images and has to reactivate/redraw all applications first. If you do this repeatedly, the stuttering completely disappears. Actually, the Mission Control shows how fast this laptop is, as all the windows/spaces are updated in real time.

What I am curious about is... click one of the open apps at the top to have it come up. Right after you hit the app, before it opens full screen does the thumbnail icon at the top have a slight black flash?

I can confirm this. The flash only occurs when you select a space/fullscreen app, but does not occur when selection a normal window app. If it were a consistent thing, I would guess I guess that its an UI feedback feature (like a 'press' animation of a button). But as it does not happen every time, it is probably a bug.

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Fyi, retina display is doing the scaling, therefore it's using much more GPU power than any other display.

You overestimate the resourced needed to do the scaling. The Intel IGP alone has a filtrate over 1 gigapixel/sec and its texture filtering performance (this is what you need for scaling) is over 5 gigatexels/sec. The 650m is much faster still. In comparison, the full 'retinized' 1920x1200 buffer is 9 million pixels. And the card does not have to redraw/rescale the full screen each frame anyway, it does it only on areas which have changes (so called 'dirty' rects).

 

[MikesGravity]

Thanks leman. Mission Control! I couldn't think of the name. These bugs drive me mad

 

[kmj2318]

Since you guys are having the same issue, can you try something for me?

Example: Open Safari (Fullscreen), iTunes (Full Screen), Mail (Full Screen) and maybe one other app.

Swipe up to reveal whatever the hell they call this these days, where you can see the row of apps or (windows) open on top, desktop in middle and dock below. I'm sure you have all had some stuttering here.

What I am curious about is... click one of the open apps at the top to have it come up. Right after you hit the app, before it opens full screen does the thumbnail icon at the top have a slight black flash? Try it a few times with a few apps. It happens sometimes, you hit it, it flashes black kind of, then comes flying at you full screen. I can't remember my 13" mbp doing that.

Interesting, I've tried doing it myself but I couldn't get it to happen. It sounds a lot like what happens to my user icon when I start AirDrop though.

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I've been looking at Activity Monitor and how my system reacts to certain things I do. I was wondering if the CPU usage I've been seeing is typical. For example, when I swipe a month in Calendar, the application uses 30% of CPU for that, sounds high but that's not really based on anything. If anyone has the ability to try this on either a retina MBP or non-retina, I'd be interested in what happens.

 

[Ploki]

Interesting, I've tried doing it myself but I couldn't get it to happen. It sounds a lot like what happens to my user icon when I start AirDrop though.

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I've been looking at Activity Monitor and how my system reacts to certain things I do. I was wondering if the CPU usage I've been seeing is typical. For example, when I swipe a month in Calendar, the application uses 30% of CPU for that, sounds high but that's not really based on anything. If anyone has the ability to try this on either a retina MBP or non-retina, I'd be interested in what happens.

10.7.4, c2d 2.53 ghz user here...

Opening & updating iCal - 70% CPU
swiping a calendar - up to 80% cpu.

Wow. Never realized how sloppy this calendar is. When I do max/msp patchers and I see an UI element taking up more than 10% of CPU, I remove it.

 

[Radiating]

I'm experiencing no choppiness whatsoever, this is the smoothest computer I have ever owned (and that's comparing it to a custom built $6000 maxed out desktop from last year).

I have experienced choppiness as a result of poorly written programs or derivers, BUT that's not the computer's fault.

 

[shansoft]

You overestimate the resourced needed to do the scaling. The Intel IGP alone has a filtrate over 1 gigapixel/sec and its texture filtering performance (this is what you need for scaling) is over 5 gigatexels/sec. The 650m is much faster still. In comparison, the full 'retinized' 1920x1200 buffer is 9 million pixels. And the card does not have to redraw/rescale the full screen each frame anyway, it does it only on areas which have changes (so called 'dirty' rects).

I am not overestimate, there is already a huge lag when maximize windows / minimize when using under IGP, but does not happen with GT 650M.

It's pretty obvious that there is something wrong on Apple's end.

 

[leman]

I am not overestimate, there is already a huge lag when maximize windows / minimize when using under IGP, but does not happen with GT 650M.

Could you name some example applications? I don't notice any difference when resizing/maximising windows under both IGP or 650m (just tested it with Safari, App Store, Mail). All thee applications exhibit strong resize lag at times, but I would guess has more to do with suboptimal layout computation and redraw on resize algorithms...

 

[nontroppo]

...
What I am curious about is... click one of the open apps at the top to have it come up. Right after you hit the app, before it opens full screen does the thumbnail icon at the top have a slight black flash? ... These bugs drive me mad ...

That happens on every Mac, hold down the mouse and you'll realise it is a fade animation to visualise your click!

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I can't see any lag with maximise/minimise on either Intel or NVidia, for apps I use, but I do edit my resize speed animation:

# Increase window resize speed for Cocoa applications
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSWindowResizeTime -float 0.001

I tried slowing down my animation, still can't see any difference, or difference with my 2010 15" MBP (tried terminal and forklift). Again, the apps that seem to slow down for people all use a HTML renderer (app store, mail do too). HTML reflows the document as a window resizes, it isn't super surprising for it to exhibit inconsistent performance. The app store has appalling performance on any Mac...