Mountain Lion UI Lag on rMBP !!! (Let's Make this thread serious and hope for a fix)

That's because we're not allowed to. Apple will delete your post if it has any information regarding future releases or products.

I browse the Macrumors forums and a developer on there stated that 10.8.3 improved the safari scrolling lag and some of the UI lag, but others have said they don't see any improvement so don't hold your breath.

I've been using 10.8.3 betas since January. For me there's been a few improvements with scrolling, but nothing significant. I'm about to download the latest beta, 12D76, as some developers have said their restart time had improved. Right now at moment it takes my 15" rMBP more than 30 seconds of wheeling before it restarts.

Ah, that is why nothing is posted about it. That makes sense (I guess?). Thank you for sharing your experiences anyways. I hope to hear a little about how 12D76 performs as well. Keep us posted if possible.

I personally have high hopes to 10.8.3. I bought my 15" MBPr an hour after the keynote last summer and have been disappointed with the UI performance from the first day! Every time I have complained to Apple, the response has been that the next OS X update will be the solution. 10.8.3 will now be the 4th attempt to solve the problem, so if that doesn’t do it, I really don’t know what to do.

Just wanted to chime in and make this thread more serious. I too have this problem and it is quite severe, especially at 1920x1200 scaled. I have resorted to various hacks to eliminate as many of the animations as possible. I use TotalSpaces so that I can swipe between spaces without any animation at all. Further, I've used the following article to speed up mission control animations: http://osxdaily.com/2012/02/14/speed-up-misson-control-animations-mac-os-x/.

Thought I mind the visual stuttering appearance, I more so mind that it impedes my ability to work smoothly because actions take longer to perform than they should. It also makes reading emails difficult because scrolling through long threads is sluggish. I had expected a much smoother apple experience.

I have been patiently waiting nearly a year for a fix to come, but alas there is nothing. If the next Mountain Lion revision doesn't fix it, I will plead with apple to swap my RMBP to a regular 2012 MBP.

P.S. If anyone at apple wants to contact me, please consider yourself invited.

P.S.S. My name is Gene and my friends kid around with me sometimes and call me Geneous. This is in no way a reference to Mac Geniuses.

Thank you for the input about Mission Control. I agree that this is not just about the visual stuttering but most definitely also about productivity! I think the worst things are Preview (large pdf's), Mail (even just small threads), Safari (all the time) and Calendar (all animations). I have actually stopped using Mission Control as it is not really productive for me. I like the concept! But if I have too much open at a time, is practically useless. The "test" where you do a "New Screen Recording" with QuickTime and then enter Mission Control, is a brilliant example. Then it is practically useless as it takes up to 5-10 seconds to open up!

Like mentioned above I have also waited since the keynote last summer for Apple to fix this. If 10.8.3 does not do the job, I was actually expecting Apple to offer me some other solution. I am going to miss the retina display though, as it truly is gorgeous. Other than the lagging, which is of course a major issue!, the 15” MBPr is a perfect machine if you ask me. No doubt about it. But my girlfriend’s MB Air beats my MBPr in everyday performance any time – and for less than half the price. That doesn’t make any much sense to me.

Enough is enough. I agree that if 10.8.3 doesn’t do it, a swap and some kind of refund would be in place. Man up Apple! I know that it would be a loss, both economically and in marked shares, to accept this mistake and do what you can to resolve it, but I can assure you Apple, that this will result in a much bigger loss if you don’t do anything! This is the kind of stuff that make people forget why they paid almost twice as much compared to similar Windows laptops. If those small extra details, these Apple-perfections, are missing, what is then left???

I would also like to invite anyone at Apple to contact me at any time. I would like to pitch with information about these problems and I would very much like to discuss some kind of solution.

So I was actually blocked from this thread for a while - don't know why, just voiced my concerns as others have and now I can speak again..

I was one of those who was contacted by a Apple rep to obtain data from my comp to see what the problems are, I did as they asked and I completely agree with what others are saying here.. I have been told time and time again that the 10.8.3 update would solve everything and to "just hold on for it.." I guess we will see, but if it doesn't solve the issues on my computer as well as my girlfriends both purchased in August both exhibiting the same lag and performance issues (mine even has screen burn in)..

The next step is taking this buggy laggy expensive aluminum brick back to Apple. I have never had such a terrible computer experience from Apple and I have had pretty much every laptop model since 2007 (plastic macbooks, unibodies, airs, macbook pros, 2nd gen airs, and now retina).. I loved every one of my apple computers that's why I kept getting the newest and best they had to offer but this retina MBP is disappointing on so so so many levels.

I guess - here's to the next update? thanks for everyone for keeping this thread alive and voicing their concerns. Others that read this thread please do the same, the more people comment about these problems the more relevant the issue becomes and *hopefully Apple will do something.

Does anyone else have any work-arounds like the ones i mentioned. I'm still not able to remove all animations. When I select a space from mission control, switching to this space is animated. It would be better if it were not, because the animation stutters and takes too long to execute.

i have to say that once i connected my rMBP 15" to an external monitor (Wacom 21ux here) via thunderbolt the machine becomes a BEAST!!!! there is zero lag, such an amazing response from OSX. Although you loose the Retina effect, you get an awesome response from all the hardware.

That's because you are no longer running HiDPI resolutions. You're probably running 1920 x 1080 native resolution and the GPU's have no problem processing that.
As for gaming, they too are running at non HiDPI resolutions. I sincerely hope Apple is not going to leave us 1st generation Retina MacBook users in the dumps with this problem. I've been very patient since October 2012, but my patience is seriously wearing thin 😟

I've seen 10.8.3 in action on a dev friends machine and it appears to help quite a bit, but its still not as fast as my 11 inch AIR. In any event, people in this thread should be quite pleased with the improvement, especially on mission control.

Seems 10.8.3 won't solve our problems, and if for last update they spent 4-5 monthes, it means possible solution can become available only when my guarantee (August 2013) will be finished.

There are two possible solutions:

1. Let Apple callback their product, and admit that issue. Almost impossible.

2. Sell your laptop ASAP (as used device) and let many other people become familiar with such issue. :-)

They will release new platform in 3rd part of year, and maybe that device will be bugs free (I'm thinking now here a lot of peoples won't buy their product in first turn anymore). And seems I will choose 2nd solution from list above. Yep I will loose some part of my money, but not all of them.

Count me in on this. Windows in Bootcamp can handle the high resolution without a hitch, scaled dpi and everything. ****, Windows in a Parallels Virtual Machine has faster UI. Unacceptable. Together with the screen burn-in, poor battery life in the first ML releases, finder's horizontal scrollbar issues (it won't go away, so you can't easily select the last element), and horrible, horrible Safari glitches (facebook typing without text appearing on screen, some websites rendering parts of themselves all over the place), this is the worst Apple product I have ever owned, and the thing is, it's mostly software. Multiple clean installs and still no change.

Please, Apple, you must be noticing this. Your employees must be using rMBP's as well, right? In my opinion, Apple is changing from the 'high quality, high polish, high price' they used to be into 'high eyecandy, high marketing, high price'. They're slowly becoming what Apple-critics have been calling them for years, and I'd hate to see them being proven right.

Yes, it's impressive how this machine performs much better than OS X on Windows in Bootcamp!! So fast!

That's because windows doesn't use HiDPI resolution. There's a link earlier in this app that let's you change the resolution on OS X to a non-HiDPI res screen. The laptop runs blazing fast. But that defeats the purpose of owning a retina display, yes?