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"Fix" MacBook Neo Cursor Lag: Record 1 Pixel of the Screen Every 10 Seconds

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Re: "Fix" MacBook Neo Cursor Lag: Record 1 Pixel of the Screen Every 10 Seconds

#81

Post by Sidnicious »

exogen wrote: post #70

Before reading the background info, I was going to recommend a much simpler fix, but they actually already mention it in there: "Also the mouse cursor size can be changed." This was going to be my suggestion because it also fixed a similar CPU/GPU related issue many years ago: Apple's own TV.app would have minuscule color handling differences whenever subtitles would show during a movie. This was driving me nuts whil…

This issue was related to an old macOS optimization called "detached mode" or FSLP (fullscreen low power). There were related bugs in Chrome and Firefox:

- https://issues.chromium.org/issues/41359717

- https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1747999

macOS skipped compositing when only a single fullscreen surface with a black background was being rendered, but there were many ways for that render path to misbehave.

It only ever affected integrated graphics on dual GPU Macs, as far as I can remember.

Re: "Fix" MacBook Neo Cursor Lag: Record 1 Pixel of the Screen Every 10 Seconds

#82

Post by PaulHoule »

One of the most damning indictments of current software architecture is the laggy mouse which we've all gotten used to on mainstream OS.

The other day my son and I were sitting in front of the XBOX ONE we (try to) use as a Plex client and laughing about how showing a new logo while the machine is doing something meaningless to us is an act of brand destruction and that they should be showing us a Playstation logo instead... And how with the NES you could just hit the power button and start playing. The cursor never lagged like that on the 1984 Mac.

Re: "Fix" MacBook Neo Cursor Lag: Record 1 Pixel of the Screen Every 10 Seconds

#83

Post by gorfian_robot »

reminds of a prank we pulled on a coworker back in the xterminal days. every time he hit a certain key it would invoke the 'melt' screensaver briefly. he was fairly unobservant though and we had to escalate to invoking it for 1s every minute before he finally noticed.

the follow on prank was having all the xterminals 'moo' whenever new code was deployed to prod.

Re: "Fix" MacBook Neo Cursor Lag: Record 1 Pixel of the Screen Every 10 Seconds

#84

Post by thewebguyd »

PaulHoule wrote: post #82

One of the most damning indictments of current software architecture is the laggy mouse which we've all gotten used to on mainstream OS. The other day my son and I were sitting in front of the XBOX ONE we (try to) use as a Plex client and laughing about how showing a new logo while the machine is doing something meaningless to us is an act of brand destruction and that they should be showing us a Playstation logo ins…

Its also one of the most immediately visible degradations of user experience. The cursor is your agent to interact with the computer, an extension of your arm basically. It should be one of the most smooth and responsive pieces of an OS.

I remember a long time ago, early days of Gnome 3 when doing large file operations would hang the cursor. It made the whole system feel like complete garbage, totally unacceptable.

A cursor lagging (or any kind of GUI/user interaction stutters) should be a critical high priority bug, all hands on deck sort of thing. The entire experience of using the damn thing hinges on the responsiveness of the interface and pointing devices.

Re: "Fix" MacBook Neo Cursor Lag: Record 1 Pixel of the Screen Every 10 Seconds

#85

Post by dunham »

retroplasma wrote: post #73
exogen wrote: post #70

Before reading the background info, I was going to recommend a much simpler fix, but they actually already mention it in there: "Also the mouse cursor size can be changed." This was going to be my suggestion because it also fixed a similar CPU/GPU related issue many years ago: Apple's own TV.app would have minuscule color handling differences whenever subtitles would show during a movie. This was driving me nuts whil…

Yes, however, a small change of the cursor size doesn't work for me for the Neo lag (idk about the TV app). I have to set it to a size that is significantly bigger, to trigger the fix. (edit: Added that side note to the gist)

Back in the 90's I had a Matrox card that would crash the machine if the hardware cursor changed at the wrong time. I think it was related to VBI, but it's been a while.

Linux resolved this issue, but to work around it on windows, I changed my cursor to an animated dinosaur, which was built into the OS and had the side-effect of disabling the hardware cursor.

Re: "Fix" MacBook Neo Cursor Lag: Record 1 Pixel of the Screen Every 10 Seconds

#86

Post by jorvi »

arghwhat wrote: post #48
eptcyka wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since this is but an iPhone crammed into a laptop, could this behaviour stem from the fact that iPhones generally need not render a cursor?

No, the cursor just uses an overlay plane, and mobile architectures usually have far more planes (sometimes even an arbitrarily configurable amount), and more flexible hardware compositioning overall than desktop GPUs for efficiency reasons. EDIT: Also note that there is nothing new with the Neo here, as all Macs since the M1 have used the same chip architecture as the iPhone. Desktop GPU designs did not focus on tin…

> Desktop GPU designs did not focus on tiny efficiency gains

I'm not sure they're all that tiny if you can squeeze out 70% of top end performance for 25% of the power draw :)

Re: "Fix" MacBook Neo Cursor Lag: Record 1 Pixel of the Screen Every 10 Seconds

#89

Post by ramses0 »

gorfian_robot wrote: post #83

reminds of a prank we pulled on a coworker back in the xterminal days. every time he hit a certain key it would invoke the 'melt' screensaver briefly. he was fairly unobservant though and we had to escalate to invoking it for 1s every minute before he finally noticed. the follow on prank was having all the xterminals 'moo' whenever new code was deployed to prod.

That’s amazing! I am just imagining a room full of programmers with slightly divergent crontab start times all playing a "moo" sound effect, seemingly at random... not a bad ambient information radiator, actually!

Re: "Fix" MacBook Neo Cursor Lag: Record 1 Pixel of the Screen Every 10 Seconds

#90

Post by DonHopkins »

pmontra wrote: post #60
DonHopkins wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alan Dye would disagree. https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_dye_job

I think you forgot the /s Anyway, interesting story. I didn't know what a key window is. I googled. It's the active window.

Sssssh!!! I was deadpanning respect for him in the hopes that Meta will keep him long enough to inflict as much damage as possible.

TLDR:

>It’s rather extraordinary in today’s hyper-partisan world that there’s nearly universal agreement amongst actual practitioners of user-interface design that Alan Dye is a fraud who led the company deeply astray.

>My favorite reaction to today’s news is this one-liner from a guy on Twitter/X: “The average IQ of both companies has increased.”

https://x.com/shipulin/status/1996318006335401997

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