Problem diagnostics

(scroll down for solutions/walkarounds)

What we know so far about the mouse cursor skipping (jumpy, jittery, erratic movement) bug / problem of Mac OS X portrayed in the video above (when the source of knowledge is not specified, the source is me):

1. It occurs mostly with gaming and “high-precision” mouses, confirmed the following:
   1. Logitech G5, first edition and second edition,
   2. Logitech RX1000,
   3. Razer DeathAdder 3G ”Mac edition”,
   4. Logitech G3 (source and source),
   5. Logitech G9x (source),
   6. Razer DeathAdder (source),
   7. Razer Copperhead (source),
   8. Razer Lachesis (source),
   9. Razer Salmosa (source: comment below by h4rg),
   10. Saitek GM3200 (source: comment below by Matt),
   11. Razer ProClick (source: comment below by Slim),
   12. Logitech MX510 (source: comment below by hz),
   13. Logitech G500 (source: comment below by Ali — can be fixed in a similar way to Razer, see the comment),
   14. Razer Imperator (source: comment below by DrLex),
   15. Kensington Optical Elite (source: comment below by Paul),
   16. Logitech Performance MX (source: comment below by eric),
   17. Microsoft Sidewinder X8 (source: comment below by Benjamin Grundy),
   18. … (please suggest more in the comments).
2. It occurs on Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard”, 10.6 “Snow Leopard” and I don’t know about 10.4 “Tiger” 10.4 Tiger too.
3. It does not occur on Windows with the same mouses.
4. It occurs right after installing the operating system, when no other 3rd party software is installed, so it’s most likely software independent.
5. It’s computer independent. I’ve seen it on various Mac Pro, MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air and even on a Hackintosh.
6. If you connect both “normal” and “jittery” mouses together to the same computer, “normal” will remain “normal” and “jittery” will remain “jittery”.
7. Regardless of what some Google search results say, the bug occurs no matter with or without an external display.
8. Regardless of what some Google search results say, the bug is not gone when you turn off Bluetooth “search for input devices…” option or turn off Bluetooth entirely.
9. Regardless of what some Google search results say, reflashing Logitech G5 (neither of the editions) does not fix the bug.
10. Booting without Ethernet cable plugged in does not help (source).
11. USB Overdrive, SteerMouse or ControllerMate do not fix the bug (update: SteerMouse addresses the issue for Logitech mouses, see below).
12. The problem is very likely to be related to USB polling rate setting of the mouse. Mouses with 125 Hz polling rate don’t experience problems with Mac OS X (for example, Logitech MX518 which has a 125 Hz polling rate is working fine with Mac OS X, although it is considered a gaming mouse). My personal assumption about the nature of the bug (proven with USB Prober): the USB driver of Mac OS X does not adjust its polling rate to the polling rates of such mouses.
13. It seems that the problem occurs even after “downclocking” the polling rate of a mouse to 125Hz. It simply becomes less noticeable (see the video provided by user hz).

Known solutions & walkarounds

1. There is a sort of a walkaround for Razer mouses. Install official Razer drivers (obtainable from the official support site), connect your Razer mouse and set the polling rate to 125 Hz. Once you do that, the mouse will work fine on any Mac you connect it to since the setting is stored in the internal memory of the mouse. You can do the described procedure on either Mac OS X or Windows, but I personally recommend to do that on Windows, because unfortunately (as for November 2009) Razer Mac driver will not uninstall itself correctly from your Mac if you tell it to do so.
2. According to some reports, SteerMouse fixes the problem for various Logitech mouses. Unfortunately you can not fix the problem for Logitech mouses in a similar way to Razer. Logitech SetPoint on Windows won’t store the polling rate setting in the internal memory of a mouse.

It seems to me that the bug is very common — just happy Macintoshers either don’t notice or tend to ignore it. I have reported it to Apple (problem ID: 7675662) and even wrote to Steve Jobs about it… If you as well experience the same problem and you want to have it fixed by Apple, please fill a bug report to Apple Developer Connection (ADC), include your system profile and refer to cases #8023844, #7675662, #7826519, #8097819, #8102684. After that you can as well leave your own bug report identification number in the comments below, so others could refer to it. If you don’t have an ADC account, registering is free or you can as well try to use your Apple.com/iTunes account. Submitting is easy and won’t take you much time.

More information on the issue is welcome in the comments.