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

Thanks for the trick ! Indeed, it seems to be a little better .. but the FAN are running constantly, and according to istat menu, GPU temperature stays elevated

I also share some tips I tried :

• NO LONGER use TweetDeck application that clearly brings lag (at least, for me) ;
• I used to use the 1920 x 1200 screen resolution. I've installed the utility SwitchResX (shareware), and set the 2048 x 1280 screen resolution.

Just a little difference, but with that, my rMBP looks better !

I think you hit it spot on when you say "just a little difference". I just picked up my rMBP and I've had nothing but grief with the laggy skippy scrolls, especially in Safari and in Photoshop. Changing the kext file is just a band aid, running the dedicated GPU heats up the whole thing, thus the blaring cooling fan

I honestly think this is both a software and hardware issue, a poor marriage of the two. And it's going to require some major rewriting of the .kext files that I'm assuming were designed for the legacy displays, and not for the retina display.

I've made an appointment with Apple to either have my motherboard replaced or have the entire unit replaced completely. In all my 15 years of purchasing Apple portables, this is truly the first time I've experienced a defect. I guess I should have waited for a second or third generation rMBP

Hey dude, this is my first mac too. MBPr 2.6/16/512 and to fix the lag scroll issue on websites i just installed Chrome Beta and the lag it's gone on most websites that Safari is laggy! This shows that lag is a software issue that Apple are maybe fixing it in the next update!

<Edited by Host>

I got this problem as well. I solved it the first time with a clean install (erasing the SSD and using internet recovery). But now it's back AGAIN! I don't know, but it may have something to do with BootCamp and Windows...? Becuase it happened after I installed Windows the first time and now. It clearly has nothing to do with the intel 4000 card becuase there is no differense in lag on the nVidia.

I sent feedback to Apple about the problem, and I recommend you to do the same. http://www.apple.com/feedback/macbookpro.html

Boot camp is not the problem - I don't have windows installed and the UI lag is present. Someone else mentioned that the chrome browser has much less lag than the safari browser, it's definitely true.. I like safari but chrome operates much smoother (leave it to google to make better software than apple...).

You are probably right about that. It's just odd that it happened after windows install both times. I don't have any lag with the dock and not much lag in Safari. The biggest problem is lag in the UI in general (mission controll, heavy sites in browers, and GIFs acctually). No lag in Windows.

And what you will do ? Had someone bring it back his rMBP to service center ? what they will do ?

I want to say that problem not only in that, when I'm closing laptop sometimes system not going to sleep, sometimes it stucking. And when I'm opening it at morning I could see next alert "system was canceled to switch off" and it is because  I had opened terminal. But half of windows was closed.. and it is happening permanently.

I'm feeling that I've bought china undegraund version of apple, how it could be, my previous laptop (2006 MB) reset it self three times for 5 years :-) and this one is really big piece of crap.. Come on guys, I believe someone living not so far from service center, bring your laptop them back, and let them fix it.

The Apple store can't do anything about it because it is either a hardware issue that will literlly require a redesigned system (ie: remove/replace onboard graphics chip with new more powerful one, or force the deiscreet graphics card to operate 100% of the time, and/or fix the way they shake hands and share/switch the workload) ...or it's a software/driver issue, and they don't write code at the Apple store.  If they give you another one they are just replacing your broken one with another brand-new pre-broken one.

I tested them again in the Apple Store last week and I was going through all the graphics tests mentioned here (and more), and I swear I was being watched.  After three different employees asked if they could help me in 20 minutes the Store, an "Unmarked" store manager started hovering around me with a headset and a clipboard watching me like a hawk.  After I left the machine, I looked back and he was on it checking settings.  It's my opinion that they know it's broken and they are trying to hide it by optimizing settings in the store so it doesn't manifest when people are checking them out.  I was able to replicate all the judder mentioned except scrolling in iCal.

I'm either waiting for Gen 2 of the rMBP or waiting to hear from this forum that the issue is 100% fixed until I buy one.  I love Mac but this is the iPhone Death Grip debaucle all over again, and they need to acknowledge and fix it.

It's not a hardware issue, because it hasen't allways been like this. And it's not representive in Windows.

You're right. Today I was again in an apple store and tested a MBPr.

It's very simple to replicate. I just switched the resolution to the highest and opened safari, ical, mail and also 3-4 pics in fullscreen mode. Running mission control gets very laggy, you'll see. It's very annoying for those of us who bought the 1st gen of MBPr because it's a real crap, sorry to say that. But I'm very frustated about giving so much money for a product which can't afford the simplest performances.

Now I'm trying to return my MBPr back because this is not the performance I've expected from the MBPr and apple.

It could be a combination of both, but I'm still pointing in the direction of software, perhaps at the bios level. I spoke to an Apple Specialist on the phone and he may bring this up with an engineer. What I'm hoping to achieve is the ability to reflash the EFI and SMC firmwares, something that can't be done once its already been done the first time. As I wrote in my entry above, disabling the power management kext file seems to band aid some of the symptoms, but I'm not getting that nice, smooth inertia scroll that I see on the legacy MacBook Pro models.

Let us please know about results of your tries to return your rmbp

I believe it has always been like this since day 1, but I think you are right, I also think it's more of a software/driver issue. 

Although the possibility remains, drivers or not, that the Intel graphics chip might just not be powerful enough to animate the massive amout of pixels that the retina has.  Some chips architectures are built with bottlenecks in the bus like the nVidia ION I had in my Revo HTPC.  That couldn't even run 720 video smoothly nevermind 1080p even with the latest graphics drivers from nVidia (And thay make better graphics chips than intel), I had to return it.

I just installed Windows 8 on Parallels on my macbook pro retina. Internet Explorer is much better than Safari, I don't have lags even scrolling the verge. They have to update their software. It's incredible that windows is so smooth even on parallels.

Edit: I have to tweak the touchpad since scrolling the verge is too much fast on windows.

Apple could fix this issue easily if they wanted to...