Fragmented/glitchy scrolling on non-Apple browsers on Macbook Pro

[JackieAprile]

This is an issue that I have experienced across a considerable number of mid 2015 Macbook Pros (15” with 2.5ghtz processor). I have had several hardware issues with these machines since my initial purchase over a month ago, and in the time since I have had several replacement units that all have the software issue in the description below.


Every web browser I have downloaded in addition to the preinstalled Safari browser seems to have noticeably fragmented / glitchy scrolling.. Safari seems to be perfectly capable of loading busy webpages like Facebook or BBC News, and has no problem with me scrolling at medium to high speed through all the posts, photos and videos etc. Chrome and Firefox don’t perform nearly as well and I’m at a loss as to why this is happening.


On the first machine I received from Apple, I phoned tech support and the member of the support team I spoke to managed to fix this issue. He took me though the Library in the Finder and asked me to delete a load of unneeded files, like the contents of the caches folder. He then asked me to erase OS and reinstall it, and then everything worked smoothly. Unfortunately this machine had a dead pixel on the screen and I sent it back for replacement.


When the replacement had the same software issues, I phoned up tech support again and asked them to take me through what the previous tech support representative had told me to do. When I mentioned reinstalling OS, the new tech support rep advised against this, despite the fact that it had worked the previous time. He claimed that it was my internet connection speed instead, which admittedly was poor – but this didn’t explain why the problem doesn’t occur in Safari, or how the problem had been fixed on my previous macbook despite poor internet speed.


Anyway, the second machine also turned out to have a non related hardware issue within the 14 day return period, so I returned this one too. I’ve now bought another machine on which the hardware seems fine, with no physical issues to report – however this glitchy scrolling issue with web browsers is still present. I’ve tried reinstalling OS on this one and had no joy, but I’m fairly certain it’s a software issue now because it doesn’t affect Safari. I think whatever was causing the problem was fixed when the first Apple tech support rep told me delete the contents of certain folders in the Library in Finder. I’m going to try and contact Apple about this at some point, which is difficult as I’m currently in Asia rather than the UK, and I only have a UK mobile number at the moment.


Has anyone else had this issue that possibly knows how to solve it? I have a new machine that’s taken me several tries to get it right due to bad quality control on the hardware, and I can’t load any of my stuff onto it as I know I’ll probably end up having to wipe it off and reinstall OS anyway. I’d really like to be able to be able to use it as soon as I can, so any insight/help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[jerryk]

My 2 cents says that Apple spent the engineering effort to make safari work well with the Mac in these cases you define (lots of video playing, ads, etc). Other companies probably spend less effort since the Mac is small percentage of their market.

You can see this when Apple tried to create Safari for Windows. What a poor browser that was. Very error prone and the Javascript engine was not very good.

With that said I never run Safari because it is Apple only and I switch between OSX, IOS, Android, Windows, Linux all the time and I want the browser to be the same on all these platforms. So I shift between Chrome and Firefox.

 

[Lachhh]

I know what you're talking about, it's not just a thing on the 2015 macbook pros, I've seen the same on at least 4 different models of mac from different years. My mid-14 MBP (15") has the slightly choppier scrolling on non-Safari browsers too. No biggie, all of them have it. What the poster before me said about lack of optimization, sounds plausible enough, especially since the degree of choppiness varies by 3rd party browser.

What disturbs me a lot more is the disturbance of the WIFI frequency by many USB 3 dongles, to the degree that I have to tuck them well away of the MBP to prevent wi-fi issues when it's plugged in.

 

[JackieAprile]

I know what you're talking about, it's not just a thing on the 2015 macbook pros, I've seen the same on at least 4 different models of mac from different years. My mid-14 MBP (15") has the slightly choppier scrolling on non-Safari browsers too. No biggie, all of them have it. What the poster before me said about lack of optimization, sounds plausible enough, especially since the degree of choppiness varies by 3rd party browser.

What disturbs me a lot more is the disturbance of the WIFI frequency by many USB 3 dongles, to the degree that I have to tuck them well away of the MBP to prevent wi-fi issues when it's plugged in.

Yeah it is plausible, but it can be fixed, as a tech support agent from Apple helped me do it over the phone with my first one. I also think they also want everyone to use their browser so they weren't particularly interested when I phoned up about the second one and told them that it was only chrome and Firefox etc. (On the first one it was also having problems with Safari). So if I call them when I get my phone number sorted, I'll probably tell them that it's happening on safari too.

Oddly enough, I've had a bit of experience using jQuery and CSS animations when designing websites, and I've found that these work much better in chrome and Firefox, whereas they're horribly choppy in safari.

 

[Lachhh]

Yeah it is plausible, but it can be fixed, as a tech support agent from Apple helped me do it over the phone with my first one. I also think they also want everyone to use their browser so they weren't particularly interested when I phoned up about the second one and told them that it was only chrome and Firefox etc. (On the first one it was also having problems with Safari). So if I call them when I get my phone number sorted, I'll probably tell them that it's happening on safari too.

Oddly enough, I've had a bit of experience using jQuery and CSS animations when designing websites, and I've found that these work much better in chrome and Firefox, whereas they're horribly choppy in safari.

Well, if the fix involved deleting the cache folder and similar stuff, it sounds like he was just speeding the browser up for you a little, no? There's no saying the choppiness wouldn't have come back after you'd accumulated a browsing history and your cache folder started filling up again. Also, that fix would be for one specific browser, not necessarily any of the others, eh? There's also no way of saying if the choppiness wouldn't have come back after a browser update. In the light of all of this, I'd hesitate to call it a "fix".

As for Safari, it has its own set of flaws sometimes, like the occasional incomplete representation of an online form. I find myself having to switch browsers sometimes because Safari goofs up on occasion. It's the way of the world, no browser's perfect. If you look for long enough you'll find little kinks in almost every piece of software.

 

[JackieAprile]

Well, if the fix involved deleting the cache folder and similar stuff, it sounds like he was just speeding the browser up for you a little, no? There's no saying the choppiness wouldn't have come back after you'd accumulated a browsing history and your cache folder started filling up again. Also, that fix would be for one specific browser, not necessarily any of the others, eh? There's also no way of saying if the choppiness wouldn't have come back after a browser update. In the light of all of this, I'd hesitate to call it a "fix".

Hi, I see what you mean, but it wasn't just caches that he told me to delete, there were loads of additional folders that I emptied and I can't remember what/where they were. I don't think this was browser specific either as I downloaded other browsers like Opera a few days after the conversation with tech support and they worked fine, and they're not working on the new machine as Id like them to.

This really shouldn't be happening, they're performing worse on my new MacBook than on my old 2010 one that I had to replace due to a failing graphics card, and I never used to empty the caches and carry out maintenance procedures on that machine. It isn't just a little glitch, at times it's actually freezing for a whole second and then jerking halfway down the page to catch up with how far it should have scrolled in that time. Very annoying, particularly as I shelled out for a better processor.