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The cause for all your Mac OS X mouse annoyances

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Re: The cause for all your Mac OS X mouse annoyances

#41

Post by Cixelyn »

Also a newish Mac user here.

Played Starcraft/SC2 at a fairly decent level. To an RTS player the lag is extremely maddening as every mouse movement seems a bit off. (to get a good feel for exactly what's off, try to repeatedly draw diagonal strokes of the same size as fast as possible in any paint application for a good minute or two. Do it in both Windows and OSX and you'll notice something feels off about the OS you're not used to)

I tried a large number of things to get the feel right (all the old blog posts said that only acceleration was to blame), but even with mouse acceleration disabled, something felt off. Right now I only feel comfortable using my mac with mouse acceleration set to -2x for some reason.

I eventually just gave up and uninstalled SC2 from OSX. Now I only play it whenever I'm dual booted into Windows. Almost all the other mac users I know who play SC2 use this solution.

Re: The cause for all your Mac OS X mouse annoyances

#42

Post by cheald »

This is really interesting to me, because one of the key differences in the "feel" between iOS and Android is the touch "dead-zone"; Android's is larger, iOS' is nearly non-existent, and this often serves to make Android feel less responsive than iOS.

It's very curious that something like this could slip through into OS X given Apple's fanatical attention to detail, and the fact that they're aware of what that delay means for mobile UX.

Re: The cause for all your Mac OS X mouse annoyances

#43

Post by mirkules »

I expected to open this thread and see a bunch of "I've been using Macs for a long time and I've never seen a problem," and I was not disappointed.

Most people are not sensitive to minute changes in the way a mouse moves and feels. I've been a long, long time Windows user, and I absolutely love the way the mouse feels on a Windows system. I used to be a gamer as well, so I appreciate precise input, which is why I prefer high-resolution wired mice over wireless ones.

There is definitely a lag in OS X, and it drives me absolutely crazy. I started using OS X when Tiger came out, and I haven't seen any improvement through Snow Leopard (haven't used Lion yet). I mis-click on stuff all the time and it breaks my concentration having to focus so hard on the mouse. I am definitely willing to pay for a fix!

I should also note I tried USB Overdrive and another utility (name escapes me atm), but to no avail. Also, like many other people here, the touchpad is absolutely fantastic, I only see the issue with connected mice. This is probably due to the fact that I don't do graphics or precise movements with the touchpad, so it's much much more tolerable.

Re: The cause for all your Mac OS X mouse annoyances

#44

Post by jaysonelliot »

Strangely, I'm using a Cyborg R.A.T. mouse on a MacBook, and I can see a noticeable difference between mouse movement when using the touchpad vs. the mouse.

I'm not a gamer, but I appreciate the precision of a gaming mouse in my everyday work. I have never been able to use a wireless mouse because the delay is too disconcerting for me.

Is it possible that I'm getting less lag with my mouse than I am with the trackpad? Or is that in my mind?

Re: The cause for all your Mac OS X mouse annoyances

#45

Post by mirkules »

lautis wrote: post #19
bni wrote: post #6

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…

I don't mind the mouse lag in normal use, but it's very annoying in FPS games. I've actually spent a day or two tweaking OS X mouse acceleration curves and whatever settings I could find. At the desktop I could get more "windows-y" feel, but always when I tried new settings TF2 the feeling was still wrong. The lag author described is a plausible cause for my experiences.

TF2 is completely unplayable for me. I have to dual boot.

The other area where it drives me crazy is highlighting text - for some reason, it always feels cumbersome.

Re: The cause for all your Mac OS X mouse annoyances

#46

Post by tikhonj »

feralchimp wrote: post #27

There are a lot of ways for mouse input to be annoying for a particular OS / user. The bug described by the article, though, is not an area of "preference." The article claims that every device input to the mousing system takes [an extra? at least?] 32ms to be reflected in the state of the window manager. To the question of whether it's "noticeable" or not, it'd be cool if someone wrote a driver or extension to inten…

The problem with just adding more delay to see if it would make a difference is that the way you feel the delay is likely nonlinear.

Re: The cause for all your Mac OS X mouse annoyances

#47

Post by Flow »

astrodust wrote: post #36
silversmith wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not, for the longest time. That is, until I installed Team Fortress 2 for office LAN party. Having played it on Windows, it was a world of difference - OS X version seemed so inaccurate, even after getting rid of acceleration.

When you're playing a game like that you become highly attuned to the characteristics of your input device. I find the same thing happens when playing console games and the "look" stick acceleration curves are completely different between games. It is disorienting until you get your bearings and adjust to the speed and acceleration of each input system. Just as switching between Windows and OS X means switching from…

I play TF2 almost hours every day and I'm often in the top 5 players in the server when I play sniper or soldier.

I play in Mac OS X and I use a Razer Deathadder 3G Spawn. No extra drivers.

However, I tried wiggling the mouse pointer and I can't see a lag on my iMac, but if I grab a Finder-window and wiggle it left-right very fast I think there's actually some lag.

I can't really compare TF2 to Windows since in Windows I use the Razer drivers. But yeah, the mouse in TF2 in Windows feels a bit more "glued on".

Edit: Just tried the Explorer-wiggling in Windows and it too felt a bit laggy.

Re: The cause for all your Mac OS X mouse annoyances

#48

Post by jonhohle »

ovi256 wrote: post #7
rix0r wrote: post #3

The author is probably right that there is an issue somewhere, but since I've been using SteerMouse ( http://plentycom.jp/en/steermouse/ ) I haven't had any mouse annoyances anymore. Not sure what it changed though; I thought it was the acceleration curve but for all I know it could be replacing the entire OS X mouse driver, laggy code and all.

The author says that the bug is in the OS X kernel, not in any driver, so if he's right, changing a driver would not fix it, which is a pity. I've also had Windows friends complain about mouse lag on my OS X. I've always thought it was due to the different acceleration curves, but disabling OS X mouse acceleration never seemed to fix it.

The OS X kernel is largely a collection of pluggable extensions. It's likely an extension could take the place of the default mouse driver. In fact, the source might even be available to get down to the real issue.

Re: The cause for all your Mac OS X mouse annoyances

#49

Post by chris_dcosta »

I found a hardware solution to this, it's not going to sound great though, but it worked for me.

I found that all optical mice suffer from a kind of blindness when faced with surfaces that do not have sufficient contrast and crucially sufficient variety in the pattern.

It's as if the mouse thinks it's still looking at the same spot if its moved on a surface like this, hence the delayed reaction or lag.

I searched far and wide for a suitable surface and I found a picture of pebbles on a beach worked best as long as the surface of the picture is also matt and not glossy.

I know it's not a tech solution...

Re: The cause for all your Mac OS X mouse annoyances

#50

Post by Gring »

rix0r wrote: post #3

The author is probably right that there is an issue somewhere, but since I've been using SteerMouse ( http://plentycom.jp/en/steermouse/ ) I haven't had any mouse annoyances anymore. Not sure what it changed though; I thought it was the acceleration curve but for all I know it could be replacing the entire OS X mouse driver, laggy code and all.

Me too. I was very unhappy with the way the mouse felt on OS X. I even considered switching. Then I found SteerMouse, and now I'm a happy camper. Highly recommended.
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