The cause for all your Mac OS X mouse annoyances

I've always had this problem, and as a result I really can't use an external mouse with OSX. I've never had a problem with using the trackpads.

Like one of the commenters mentioned, using synergy from a Linux PC solves the problem for me. For a period, I actually resorted to running a Parallels instance of Linux with the external mouse attached to it, and setting up synergy to share the mouse pointer with OSX.

I'd like to run Linux as the main OS on my MacBook Pro, but in Linux the problem is the opposite: I've never found any driver / setting that makes the touchpad work really well under Linux (any hints would be appreciated - of course, I could always run OSX in VirtualBox under Linux, connect the touchpad to OSX and share it using synergy.... :)

Yeah, that's the one reason I never really run Ubuntu on my Air, even after I successfully jumped through all the hoops to get it installed. :)

I tried several different sets of tweaks but none of them felt right. Especially, I don't think any of them let you select with one finger and then drag with a second.

(Last I tested was about 6 months ago, I'd say.)

Newish Mac user here. The "feel" of mouse cursor movement is one of the few areas were Windows is superior. Years ago something like this was a big issue in Linux/X.org aswell but recently it has been fixed, atleast it feels like it for me.

I have noticed this "lag" with my magic mouse. Until now I have assumed there is something wrong with the hardware in it. Or that the bluetooth connection was breaking up. When I use the build in trackpad I have never noticed any lag.

Since Apple normally pay attention to details like this, im suprised that they have ignored this issue for so long.

If you use it for a while you might become blind to it?

This has not been fixed since OS X Tiger. In fact, they even removed functionality that mitigated that problem. I used to run a small application that would patch the acceleration curves but that API has vanished since Leopard. :-(

Longtime Mac user here... for what it's worth, I don't know what the OP is referring to. I use both Mac and Windows regularly (home vs work), and I don't see a noticeable difference. Maybe I've just gotten used to it. Definitely isn't a problem for me.