Comments for Dae’s blog

Comment on Mouse cursor skipping (jumping) bug on Mac OS X by Tom

Tom — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 09:45:10 +0000

I’ve also had the cursor jumping issue with several mice on Mac OS X Snow Leopard. First with a basic logitech mouse (can’t remember the model) which I already gave away, because I thought it just doesn’t work with a Mac. And then I’ve tested with two HP mice which I had borrowed from work, both had the same issue.

Now I’m looking for a new wireless mouse (non-bluetooth). So, a question: has anyone had issues with wireless mice? or does this only concern wired mice? Couldn’t recognise any wireless from the list above…

Comment on Mouse cursor skipping (jumping) bug on Mac OS X by Johan Svanberg

Johan Svanberg — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:44:33 +0000

I can confirm this using Logitech G9 on Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6.4).

Comment on AppleScript to mount/unmount a drive by Dae

Dae — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 09:09:09 +0000

As I say above,
“I’d like to emphasize: this script is meant to unmount an entire drive rather than just a volume. It takes a volume as an identifier of the needed drive.”

Comment on AppleScript to mount/unmount a drive by Luis

Luis — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 01:06:52 +0000

Does a similar script exist that will mount and unmount a hard drive, not a volume.
I’m trying to find something that will unmount/remount a continually connected external hard drive? Thanks for any help!

Comment on Mouse cursor skipping (jumping) bug on Mac OS X by Dae

Dae — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 15:22:04 +0000

Could you make a video recording of it?

Comment on Mouse cursor skipping (jumping) bug on Mac OS X by Justin Frankel

Justin Frankel — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 02:20:36 +0000

I get this too, on a stock mac mini (c2d 2.26ghz, 2GB RAM), using a MS optical mouse. I’ve tried two different MS optical mice, they both do it, and they’re also both fine on a Win7 PC. Driving me nuts! The three second pauses infuriates my wife, too.. :(

Comment on “Building boot caches” error when changing startup disk by Piers Goodhew

Piers Goodhew — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 01:28:18 +0000

Yep, worked here too. Does not appear to mean anything at all is happening to/with any boot caches.

Comment on Mouse cursor skipping (jumping) bug on Mac OS X by Dae

Dae — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 20:08:19 +0000

I’ve been researching Mac mouse acceleration for several months now. I will post a report later.

I have reasons to believe that the acceleration curve is only one of the problems related to unusable-ness of mouse movement on OS X.

And if there was a fix for $200, I’d personally pay that price. But there are no fixes at all, and USB Overdrive / Steermouse devs are ignoring my letters.

Comment on Mouse cursor skipping (jumping) bug on Mac OS X by Chris

Chris — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 19:52:35 +0000

Also, why should we have to pay $20 for those programs to fix the acceleration curve that Apple broke? Ugh.

There’s a free alternative to these paid ones, I can’t remember the name, but it’s not worth using because it only uses a public Apple API to slightly tweak the mouse, but it doesn’t actually CHANGE the cliff-acceleration, so the only REAL way to get rid of it is with Steermouse or USB Overdrive. :-/

Comment on Mouse cursor skipping (jumping) bug on Mac OS X by Chris

Chris — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 19:50:01 +0000

Sorry, I misreported the name. It’s the latest model, the Evoluent VerticalMouse3.

I don’t know its native polling rate, but I do see the cursor jitter in OS X 10.6.4. It isn’t like that under Windows at all. I do believe you’re right about the poll rate. If OS X reads the mouse position 125 times per second (125 hz) and the mouse updates its position faster than that, you would get choppier movement.

It lets you switch dpi from 2600 to 1800 to 1300 to 800 via button under the mouse, this is a hardware setting which requires no drivers, but unfortunately it does not improve things.

So I can’t draw with this mouse at all, and doing quick moves across the screen can be a bit annoying since the jitter is worst when you move quickly.

One other thing I hate about OS X is the acceleration curve which is like a cliff, where low to moderate mouse speed uses a low speed, and as soon as you go over a small speed threshhold it SHOOTS UP and goes blazingly fast instead. It really is cliff-shaped. On Windows, Linux and everywhere else, Acceleration is a smooth curve which means that the faster you move the mouse, the faster the cursor moves.

OS 9 did not have this bad acceleration curve, it was in OS X that they screwed things up. That’s why it feels like you mouse through mud if you move the mouse slowly, and as soon as you put a bit of speed on it it shoots away. It feels bad and the only solution, short of Apple fixing their horribly broken acceleration CLIFF into a CURVE, is to use USB Overdrive or Steermouse’s alternate mouse drivers which do correct the curve. They don’t fix the jitter though, but they’re good if you want to fix the acceleration.

It sucks that Apple doesn’t just fix the curve. Pretty much everybody hates it the way it is now, and it wasn’t like this in OS 9.