which bugs of the 1st gen/"beta" rMBP do you think the first rMBP update will fix?

[mjn298]

I couldn't tell you, but I don't agree with some of his conclusions as they conflict with my own daily experience.

My limited experience has been similar to yours. I thought everything about the rMBP was beautiful and I don't know what exactly people are complaining about but I again don't own the machine, just wanted to check it out.

Have people plugged their rMBP's into external displays (I'm guessing it uses the discrete GPU to run a display via thunderbolt) and saw if there's "lag" (or whatever) on that?

 

[sofianito]

Sorry to burst this bubble, but I had no screen "lag" issues under Lion or Mountain Lion. None whatsoever anywhere - not in Dashboard, Launchpad, Mission Control, or UI animations. The only area where I experienced some unusual slow-down was trying to scroll through some script-heavy web sites after pinching/zooming. Otherwise there are no issues at all.

I don't know why you and some other people are experiencing "lag", but as an owner and daily user I can confidently tell you that this is pure nonsense.

According to you statements, I think you use less than 1% of your rMBP capacities, that's why you've never seen lags neither on Lion nor ML... You should have bought an eee pc

 

[Drag'nGT]

as discussed in the press, as well as in many threads in this very forum, the rMBP is a first-generation product of unprecedented "betaness", with an update expected to be in order sooner than usually.

that being said, which bugs of the 1st gen/"beta" rMBP do you think the first rMBP update will fix? when will that much-needed update come? or will they update the rMBP 15" before they will bring out the 13"? will the problematic 15" release experience slow down the release of the 13"?

thanks for any thoughts!

I might get yet another warning for "not being nice" but this kind of smart ass sly comment makes me want to pop you in the mouth. Or at the very least pop you on the back of your head like Gibbs does on NCIS.

While not a perfect machine, none of us have ever had a perfect one (computer), this is as close to perfection as a machine gets. Your conjecture is purely based on "the future". All products have a better version coming in the future but this machine runs and performs extremely well. When you are the first company to push a screen out with this resolution you can expect that the models coming after it will have upgraded components simply because the graphics companies have a reason to push themselves forward.

 

[mjn298]

Yeah, now that the semiconductor/graphics guys know what their performance demands are we're gonna see some insane progress.

 

[DVD9]

The reason in my opinion is the HD 4000 drives the display, not the GPU for most tasks. HD 5000 in haswell will be 2.5 times faster. That will go away. Still a minor issue for getting such a great screen.

Inte's HD4000 brought a 40% increase in graphics performance, which was a huge jump.

A "2.5 times" increase would be a 250% increase. That will take Intel at least six years. It might take them ten years.

The size of the graphics area of the Ivy Bridge chips increased a lot from the previous Sandy Bridge processors. There is simply no room on the processor to continue enlarging the size of the on-board GPU to bring about a 250% increase or anything remotely close to that.

 

[Panini]

I agree with OP

On release, it was still better than any PC product released thus far, but the attention to detail isn't par with Apple's previous products. The scrolling lag is enough to make it beta for me.

 

[iamthedudeman]

It'll help with the problem but it won't fix it, that same review even says it near the end in which it says

"Future CPUs will take this added workload into account, but it’ll take time to get there."

And for context he's reference he's talking about how the HD4000 is pushing the screen...

"Remember at 2880 x 1800 there are simply more pixels to push and more work to be done by both the CPU and the GPU. It’s even worse in those applications that have higher quality assets: the CPU now has to decode images at 4x the resolution of what it’s used to. Future CPUs will take this added workload into account, but it’ll take time to get there."

I disagree, it should fix it. And the Anand article says as much. I know they are talking about the HD4000, that is why I posted it in the first place.

The HD 5000 will be 2.5x as fast as the HD 4000. And the CPU will be a 'tock' update.

From Andatech:

Looking forward, Haswell will have an even more significant impact on the MacBook Air next year. Without room or the thermal budget for a discrete GPU, the MacBook Air stands to benefit even more from improved processor graphics. With 2.5x the graphics compute power of HD 4000 plus embedded DRAM, Haswell's processor graphics will bring an entirely new level of gaming performance to the MacBook Air

http://www.anandtech.com/Show/Index...age=9&slug=macbook-air-13inch-mid-2012-review

 

[stevelam]

I'm calling BS on this - you don't own one.

yes, i do own one.

i don't know if you've noticed, but no one here actually listens to your fake reviews and rants. i'm almost positive that the only thing you do on your RMBP is load up macrumors and post about it. in that case i totally believe your experience is super smooth simply because you do nothing of value on it.

anyone who actually listens to you over anand's technically superior review is just following a fool.

 

[725032]

I tried the first gen model... Was completely underwhelmed.

Until they fix all the bugs then its just a pretty paper weight.

Role on next version!

 

[Doggonit]

Role on next version!

I'll be glad when school starts again. The children will be back in school, not learning to spell of course as that's too old-fashioned. Maybe they'll get to do a social diversity course and talk about their feelings.

 

[terraphantm]

yes, i do own one.

i don't know if you've noticed, but no one here actually listens to your fake reviews and rants. i'm almost positive that the only thing you do on your RMBP is load up macrumors and post about it. in that case i totally believe your experience is super smooth simply because you do nothing of value on it.

anyone who actually listens to you over anand's technically superior review is just following a fool.

I don't know - last night I was working in Photoshop with mutliple 1500x1500 documents w/ ~15 layers each. Photoshop itself was using 2GB memory. I also had about 20 tabs open in Safari, a rather large pdf open in acrobat, a few powerpoints open (one with a 48x36 page size), and a few fairly large excel sheets. I cannot say I had any real slow downs. The only issues seemed to be poor coding of other apps (Excel just completely locked up on me for some reason).

Maybe people don't listen to the overall positive reviews. But I don't think they listen to people like you either (you're borderline trolling in most cases - sometimes it's not even borderline).

Anandtech's assessment is probably the fairest honestly. They don't deny the issues, but they also acknowledge that they're mostly of no consequence.

 

[leman]

Quite honestly, I am not aware of any hardware issues with the rMBP aside of anecdotic lag reports, which I was not able to replicate to be substantial or work-prohibiting (btw, websites like 'The Verge' lagged on every other machine and every major browser I could get my hands on). There seems to be some bugs with Dock (involving stacks) and Safari rendering performance, which are clearly a software issue. Also, there is some lag to mission control when many windows are opened. The later issue is indeed a hardware problem because many windows get to be redrawn/many textures have to be pushed around. However, this can be easily solved with a smarter rendering algorithm at the expense of some RAM usage, by maintaining mipmap chains for visible windows.

 

[pgiguere1]

HD 5000 in haswell will be 2.5 times faster.

Source?

Also, any proof that GUI framerate issues are caused by the GPU and not CPU?

 

[prfrma]

GUI problems are almost all software/mission control related. Chrome being the biggest cultprate.

Beyond that, even more software/UI related things (adobe and c4d for me).

 

[AirThis]

Source?

I've seen several articles where they mention that Haswell GPU performance will be multiplied by a factor of 2.5 with respect to Ivy Bridge. However, they specifically mention GT3.

This is one of the articles:

http://technewspedia.com/leaked-specifications-of-haswell-gt1gt2gt3-igp/

Edit: here's the quote:

"The real surprise is GT3, which as rumored will consist of four modules, totaling 40 EUS and 160 ALUs (shader processors) and GT3 will also Crystalwell technology (dedicated graphics memory), without a doubt a quantum leap in relation to Intel’s previous IGP, which should provide at least 2.5x performance compared with the current HD Graphics 4000 (GT2) of Ivy Bridge."

 

[leman]

Inte's HD4000 brought a 40% increase in graphics performance, which was a huge jump.

A "2.5 times" increase would be a 250% increase. That will take Intel at least six years. It might take them ten years.

The size of the graphics area of the Ivy Bridge chips increased a lot from the previous Sandy Bridge processors. There is simply no room on the processor to continue enlarging the size of the on-board GPU to bring about a 250% increase or anything remotely close to that.

Haswell is reported to have up to 40 shader units (or EU, how Intel calls it). Ivy Bridge has 16 EUs. 40/16 = 2.5

Maybe Haswell will have a huge die size. Or maybe they have learned on how to use the tri-gate transistors properly now and will be able to repackage it into a smaller area.

P.S. I just looked it up and Ivy Bridge die size has reduced by 40% compared to sandy bridge, in spite of the number of transistors increasing by 50% (source: Wikipedia)

4-core Sandy Bridge with 12 EU: 995e6 transistors, 216 mm2
4-core Ivy Bridge with 16 EU: 1400e6 transistors, 160 mm2

 

[AZREOSpecialist]

According to you statements, I think you use less than 1% of your rMBP capacities, that's why you've never seen lags neither on Lion nor ML... You should have bought an eee pc

And everyone else who also says they are not experiencing these issues, they are also using only 1% of their RMBP's capabilities?

----------

yes, i do own one.

i don't know if you've noticed, but no one here actually listens to your fake reviews and rants. i'm almost positive that the only thing you do on your RMBP is load up macrumors and post about it. in that case i totally believe your experience is super smooth simply because you do nothing of value on it.

anyone who actually listens to you over anand's technically superior review is just following a fool.

I'm just conveying my experience, I'm sorry yours has been different. I have used all of the Adobe CS6 suite of applications, no lag or choppiness at all. I regularly edit 30+ MP photos in Photoshop, no issues except that I have to put it into full 2880x1800 using SwitchResX in order to not see pixel doubled representations of my photos, but that's about it.

The UI animates as is needed, no delays there. No issues with web pages either except when pinching/zooming some sites which are script-heavy, scrolling in a zoomed state is pretty difficult. But other than that, no problems here.

Anandtech is a great source of information. He says that web page scrolling is 20-30 fps on the RMBP vs about 40-50 fps on the non-Retina. I apologize to everyone for not being able to tell the difference between 30 fps and 40 fps, I still don't see any "lag".

 

[AZREOSpecialist]

Lag vs No Lag videos

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.

 

[sofianito]

And everyone else who also says they are not experiencing these issues, they are also using only 1% of their RMBP's capabilities?

Those who say it is not an issue are just recognizing that the "cosmetic lag" (the new marketing term) exist but it does not affect their productivity or work...

In your case, you are just negating its existence. Really, it is not that hard to reproduce the lag issue. So, if in your daily usage you don't see it then I could only conclude you are using lightly your rMBP (No mean to pun).

What are your rMBP specs? Why didn't you still update your sig and show your pride?

 

[AZREOSpecialist]

Those who say it is not an issue are just recognizing that the "cosmetic lag" (the new marketing term) exist but it does not affect their productivity or work...

In your case, you are just negating its existence. Really, it is not that hard to reproduce the lag issue. So, if in your daily usage you don't see it then I could only conclude you are using lightly your rMBP (No mean to pun).

What are your rMBP specs? Why didn't you still update your sig and show your pride?

Look at the video I posted in the post just prior to yours. Two links - lag video from someone else vs video from my machine showing no lag. I'm not making this up. I have a 2.6/16/512. I haven't updated my signature in three years - I also have two new iPads and two 17" MacBook Pros that I haven't put in my signature either. Sheesh!

 

[725032]

I'll be glad when school starts again. The children will be back in school, not learning to spell of course as that's too old-fashioned. Maybe they'll get to do a social diversity course and talk about their feelings.

ha ha, sorry headmaster... another keyboard commando at work

 

[Adidas Addict]

This whole thread was a thinly veiled attempt to troll on owners of the Retina machine.

 

[Jiten]

If the Rev B. MBPr proves to be much more superior then I'll just sell my Rev A and pay the difference to upgrade. Problem solved. I don't need to experience the anxiety of waiting for the next big thing or deprive myself from enjoying hi-res computing now. If you make enough disposable income, you can upgrade as much as you want.

 

[ixodes]

as discussed in the press, as well as in many threads in this very forum, the rMBP is a first-generation product of unprecedented "betaness", with an update expected to be in order sooner than usually.

that being said, which bugs of the 1st gen/"beta" rMBP do you think the first rMBP update will fix? when will that much-needed update come? or will they update the rMBP 15" before they will bring out the 13"? will the problematic 15" release experience slow down the release of the 13"?

thanks for any thoughts!

The "silent, secretive" side of Apple will make some subtle but important hardware changes.

The software side will ad "features & fixes" and the second gen MacBook Pro Retina, will be one very well sorted out model. This is Apple's expertise.

Apple's very good about learning from the first go-round, once it's in the hands of users. They then have lots of data to learn from, and always release a great second year model.

Without fail, it's the one to have if you plan on keeping it for a few years.

----------

If the Rev B. MBPr proves to be much more superior then I'll just sell my Rev A and pay the difference to upgrade. Problem solved. I don't need to experience the anxiety of waiting for the next big thing or deprive myself from enjoying hi-res computing now. If you make enough disposable income, you can upgrade as much as you want.

Well said. This is what I usually do.

 

[DVD9]

If the Rev B. MBPr proves to be much more superior then I'll just sell my Rev A and pay the difference to upgrade. Problem solved. I don't need to experience the anxiety of waiting for the next big thing or deprive myself from enjoying hi-res computing now. If you make enough disposable income, you can upgrade as much as you want.

You can give that laggy thing to your grandma. I wouldn't give you a hundred bucks for it.