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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

#71

Post by AshleysBrain »

lloeki wrote: post #25

Wild guess at where it might come from: 32ms divided by 4 is 0.008s which gives us 125Hz (the typical mouse sample rate). So my guess is that some form of mouse movement analysis (like mouse smoothing) is working on at least four samples (so that it can statistically mean something), rolling. Why it does so might be that 32ms is the right time to evaluate the intent of a typical human interaction with a pointer, mayb…

IMO a more likely answer: 32ms / 2 = 16ms, the typical frame time for a monitor running at 60 Hz. Also the post noted disabling QuartzExtreme (GPU accelerated rendering) fixed the issue. I suppose the mouse cursor is drawn with GPU acceleration. Then, to optimise rendering, the window system uses double buffering (a common technique) - however, double-buffering has the well-known side-effect of introducing a one frame delay. So it would take 16ms to see your mouse cursor update, but with double buffering it takes 32ms.

I think Windows uses a special graphics card feature (an "overlay" IIRC) to update the mouse cursor independently of the double buffered window system. I noticed moving windows became ever so slightly more laggy going from XP to Vista - probably because the window system became GPU accelerated.

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

#72

Post by nirvana »

I've done original research where we tested users perception of lag. We tested 5ms, 10ms, 15ms, and up. We found that most people were able to perceive lag in the 30ms range, and so this post is correct when it says that. However, I was able to recognize lag down to around 15ms. (We did double blind tests and you had to indicate when you saw lag, not all of the events were lagging. It was pretty accurate, but this was a test for some gaming software and so the results weren't published.)

I perceive no lag in the Mac OS X mouse. I am very sensitive to it. I'm able to perceive the flicker in fluorescent bulbs, yet I do not see any lag in the mouse.

I think if he's seeing 32ms, it is some particular combination of hardware and software.

I've tested this again with my trackpad and my cheap logiteck trackball. No perceivable lag.

I play Team Fortress all the time, there is no mouse lag. There is, of course, noticeable network lag.

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

#73

Post by feralchimp »

tikhonj wrote: post #46
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.

Great point. Per my example above, we might only discover that "64ms kinda sucks", not that "an additional 32ms on top of the original 32ms kinda sucks".

And who knows, maybe after a "kinda sucky valley" there's some comfy-feeling region up above 250ms, where the "float" just feels okay. :)

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

#74

Post by bodyfour »

zyb09 wrote: post #23

Got a Razer Deathadder, they come with their own OSX drivers that seem to circumvent the issue. Also sad to see so many Magic Mouse users here ;) I know everybody has their own preferences, but that is not a good mouse.

I actually used a Razer Imperator, but I found it to be very flaky: about once an hour it would lose the plot completely and I'd have to unplug and reinsert the USB cable. Not a great experience in-game :-( I don't know if it was that particular mouse or the OS/X driver that was causing me problems, though.

I switched to a Steelseries Xai, and I've been loving it. It doesn't have any special mac drivers but all of the fancy settings are controllable via a little LCD screen on the bottom of the mouse.

I'm not sure if its affected by this "32 ms" problem. I only use OS/X so I might just be used to it at this point.

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

#75

Post by Gravityloss »

eykanal wrote: post #10

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.

Windows and Linux (Ubuntu Gnome or whatnot) have a much much much more responsive mouse input for me than Mac OS X. Maybe some people don't notice this, but for those who do, it's very annoying. It's inconceivable to me how somebody doesn't notice it, especially if OS X is supposed to be for graphic designers who use the mouse a lot. Maybe they all have Wacom or some such tablets.

It's much harder to hit any buttons because you can't just speedily mouse over it, you have to use visual feedback to inch on it. And it causes much more stress and strain on your hand, wrist, elbow, eyes and everything. No matter what mouse hardware you are using. The same mice work very well in Windows and Ubuntu. The OS X drivers just suck. I've tried USB overdrive, mouse settings and everything. The basic lag just doesn't go away.

Too bad some keyboard shortcuts like for scrolling work really bad in OSX too - the cursor stays in one place when going up or down pages meaning you have to use the mouse.

The cursor jumping is another crazy issue indeed. You never know where it is going to be once you go over a certain speed threshold.

(Writing this from OS X. Otherwise it's quite nice.)

Caveat: I used to play Quake where the difference between 60 and 77 FPS is life and death. Everybody used high rate CRT:s and clocked their mice to 500 Hz or so. Here's a real mouse test: http://www.esreality.com/?a=post&id=1265679 . I'm annoyed at the mushy interfaces that electronics could have gotten rid of decades ago. It's somehow just a less stressful situation to take photos or browse them in a camera with less delay for example.

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

#76

Post by [deleted] »

silversmith wrote: post #18
eykanal wrote: post #10

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.

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.

[deleted]

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

#77

Post by Gravityloss »

gouggoug wrote: post #61
eykanal wrote: post #10

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.

I'm glad someone posted about this mouse problem. It is the most annoying thing that prevented me from switching to a mac for a long time. I was telling my friends that the mouse was not behaving the same way in Mac Os X and Windows. They were all saying that I was imagining it. I switched to Mac a year ago and got use to it, but I can still feel a difference.

I used a Mac and a PC at work side by side (Often working on the mac when the PC was waking, booting or installing some security upgrades which was a big part of the week, Vista wasn't really any good). But in mousing the difference was clear, Windows had the advantage. I tried switching the mice back and forth but no help.

I also had Ubuntu at home and at my parents' place, and it had the same simple responsive mouse as Vista.

Now I've gone full Mac but it still constantly annoys me at work. If it weren't for the other good things in the OS...

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

#78

Post by Gravityloss »

chris_dcosta wrote: post #49

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…

This may fix the problem for some, but at least for me the exact same mice and mousepads worked fine in Windows and Ubuntu. It's an OS X software issue.

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

#79

Post by calloc »

kitsune_ wrote: post #65
mietek wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you're not the only one. There's simply more switchers than ever before, and they're vocal about their complaints.

It's not just "switchers" that complain about this stuff. If there is one thing Apple can't get right, it's mouse input. The input lag is one thing. What about the actual hardware? Remember the hockey puck? The pro mouse? The mighty mouse? There is a joke somewhere in there... maybe about Jobs having to "invent" multi-touch because he couldn't grock the concept of a mouse.

Apple has the worlds most terrible mouse product designs, but if there is one thing they got right it was the touchpads. I will not be purchasing a Windows laptop until I can get one with the exact same touchpad with the exact same surface and feeling to it. I've spent countless hours with my Mac and just the touchpad, I wouldn't even dream of doing the same with my Lenovo IdeaPad or any other laptop I have played with to date.

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

#80

Post by calloc »

Flow wrote: post #70
zyb09 wrote: post #23

Got a Razer Deathadder, they come with their own OSX drivers that seem to circumvent the issue. Also sad to see so many Magic Mouse users here ;) I know everybody has their own preferences, but that is not a good mouse.

I have a Deathadder 3g Spawn and I don't use the Razer drivers. If I look at my mouse in the app "USB Prober" I see OS X uses a 2ms interrupt to poll the mouse. If I'm not completely off that's 500Hz. More than the 125Hz that seems to be default USB polling frequency.

My Microsoft Laser Mouse 6000 which I have had for ages and I've never had a lag problem with is set to be polled at 10 ms.
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