Laggy scrolling on Chrome or Safari on Retina MacBook Pros? Problem Solved!
A lot of people have been complaining about one of the drawbacks of being an early adopter of Retina display laptops: laggy scrolling on many of many of the apps especially on Webkit-based web browsers such as Chrome and Safari.
I have noticed that both of the browsers have gradually been performing better and better since they first supported the Retina display MacBook Pros but when browsing some image heavy websites, they still exhibit very noticeable lag when you scroll. You don’t notice it? Try browsing TheVerge.com or your Facebook News Feed.
Luckily I found a solution. Download WebKit Nightly (link) and use it to browse these problematic websites. You will see that the lag is completely gone.
This does not only tell you that the problem is not about the hardware, it also confirms that software optimization is still required by developers. And it is not likely that developers are going to pay attention to this until they at least own one of these machines or the Retina laptops become mainstream.
But at the very least, these sites are running fast again. Perhaps faster than the normal non-Retina display computers. Although you still have to deal with it quitting itself every now and then.