Mouse Acceleration driving me CRAZY!

C

christopher_farley

Registered
I am the new owner of a Mac Mini. I have never before owned an Apple product, but I come from a Unix background, and I have fallen in love with the Mac (on paper).

Unfortunately, there is a serious problem (IMO) with the user interface, and it affects EVERYTHING I do on the Mac. It is the beast known as MOUSE ACCELERATION. This is the "feature" that makes your mouse go very slow if you move it very slow, or very fast if you make a fast motion.

My "primitive" Unix desktops (and even my Windows ones) have a 1:1 relationship between the physical mouse movements and the distance the pointer travels on the screen. I LOVE THIS. It is a precise system. It allows me to use my wonderful Logitech optical mice on a very small mouse pad without ever needing to pick up the mouse and re-center it on the pad.

The love everything about the new Mac Mini, except the way the mouse behaves! If my pointer is positioned just beneath a button I want to click, it feels like I am dragging the pointer through quicksand to get to the button! It actually seems like some invisible force is moving the button farther and farther away from me as I try to inch ever so closer to it!

I did some searching, and it seems as if mouse acceleration is not easily disabled. The most hopeful advice I saw was on an Apple programming mailing list which seemed to indicate that, if somebody were so inclined, they could write a mouse driver with a linear acceleration curve. HAS ANYONE DONE THIS? MY GOD -- HAS ANYONE DONE THIS?

I am also wondering if this is a function of my particular mouse. Because, when googling for info I discovered that, for every person who was in agony over mouse acceleration, there were at least three more people who had ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE what the problem was.

I always heard that Apple was hyper-aware of these basic human interface issues, so the existence of this difficult/impossible-to-disable feature is hard to explain!

HELP HELP HELP!
 
Maybe something in System Preferences-> Universal Access...Mouse Tab could help to find what you are looking for.
 
You can also change the acceleration through USB overdrive, and alternate mouse driver package (al so useful for getting application specific mouse settings), available at http://www.usboverdrive.com/ . Its $20 shareware but you can try it out first. It allows you to turn acceleration off, or set it to almost anything from 1% to 100%.

Good luck
 
USB Overdrive has helped me get rid of the mouse acceleration. Which is great. But now the mouse is quite slow, even when I set USB Overdrive to the fastest setting (80 dpi).

I'm wondering if there is something weird about this Logitech Optical Wheel Mouse that I am using. In order to traverse the screen from one corner to the other, I still need to pick the mouse up at least once to get more room on my desk. On all other platforms I have used, it is no problem at all to get a lot more speed out of the mouse.

In other words, do you think this might be a problem with my hardware (the mouse) as opposed to the operating system. (I'm sure a lot of people would just assume the problem is with me -- I'm being too picky!)
 
I have never had a problem with my mouse except when I used my MX700 wireless mouse, that always seemed laggy and the accel seemed goofy. Things are fine on my Logitech 3 button scroll.
 
MouseDrive won't work with USBOverdrive, so I guess I've got to choose between a slow mouse, and a mouse with no acceleration. I think I'll choose the slow mouse for now.

Actually, I think I'll try a different mouse. Honestly, if anybody had to deal with this, it would drive them crazy -- I don't think it's just me. And since I've seen very few complaints about this, I have to assume it's this mouse. I mean, different optical mice have different DPI values, so maybe this OEM Logitech is very low-resolution.

The USBOverdrive driver has helped a lot. Coming from a Linux background it's very weird to think that I have to pay somebody $20 to tweak a user interface setting, but I suppose if it makes the difference between useable and unusable...

Thanks for the info!
 
lol. A mouse with NO acceleration would drive me crazy. To me, it makes it easy to zip accross a large screen, as well as do precise movements in Photoshop, all without adjustment. A lack of acceleration would make my brain explode.

To each his own. Glad you're otherwise enjoying your new Mac.
 
I love how people (including myself, of course) find that _their_ way is the ONE way and bash other people (Apple in this case) for not moving along this ONE way. It's hilarious. The first big wave of switchers from Windows brought all these "My mouse needs a turbo" comments all over the Mac community, and now this, basically the opposite...

If you need to work more exactly than you can with a mouse, I suggest getting a tablet device for your Mac.
 
I've noticed the same thing, again being a windows/linux crossover to a mac mini. Currently using a standard two button MS (boo hiss!) mouse..

When scrolling at first scrolling is (like windows/linux) 1:1 but if you scroll continuously down a large page the "jumps" which the mouse takes are much larger as in it will scroll a few lines at a time to begin and then start doing big chunks and then whole pages.

Just a bit annoying when ur trying to scroll through a large document, overshoot, scroll back, overshoot, then have to scroll slowly until you get to the bit to avoid the large jumps.

b.
 
lol.. Isn't that the supposed beauty behind the iPod interface? The faster and longer you move your finger on the scrool wheel, the faster the scrolling goes on screen.... doesn't acceleartion make sense? It's just like a car. It's not like your car has different speeds depending on how far you push the pedal. Your car just goes faster the farther and faster you push the pedal.

I like acceleration. :D
 
bleem2k said:
When scrolling at first scrolling is (like windows/linux) 1:1 but if you scroll continuously down a large page the "jumps" which the mouse takes are much larger as in it will scroll a few lines at a time to begin and then start doing big chunks and then whole pages.

Just a bit annoying when ur trying to scroll through a large document, overshoot, scroll back, overshoot, then have to scroll slowly until you get to the bit to avoid the large jumps.
b.
Click to expand...

bleem2k: That sounds like you're using an old program (such as Appleworks). The newer systems are too fast and that mouse scrolling, such as when selecting text that runs off the visible window area.

Incidentally, this behavior is not limited to Mac apps. I had a 700 mHz Compaq and Word 97 did the same thing.

Doug
 
Christopher_Farley,

I wouldn't describe Windows' pointer as having no acceleration. If it had no acceleration, no matter how fast you pushed the mouse, the pointer would always travel at the same speed. It just seems to handle acceleration a bit _differently_. To achieve a 1:1 correspondence, you have to mess with the mouse System Preferences in OS X as others have mentioned--just as you would in the Windows with the Control Panels.

With my Logitech optical mouse (plain jane), I have to set Windows XP (under Virtual PC) mouse control panel to the fastest setting to get it going where I like it. The fastest setting in OS X is way too fast.

Doug
 
I have to agree with bleem2k and Christopher Farley.

This mouse on my new iMac is driving me nuts too!!!

Does anyone have a solution for it? I have already tried MouseZoom and though it gives you better/faster mouse movement it still is not a 1:1 physical movement when slowing down your mouse to grab a small desktop element, like a slide bar. I too have tried several mise (mouses?) with all the same results. It can only be in one place now, the mouse driver.

I'm running OS X 4.3.9 on a 1.25 GHz PowerPC G4 iMac (1 GB RAM).

I've been hunting for a fix for days now. I too am a Unix/Windoze user and all the mice work fine on those OSes, including ALL linux distros.

Since most of us could nearly live without a keyboard, I suppose the mouse is the absolute most important part of the human/machine interconnect.

This is really the ONLY complaint I have about OS X, and no, it's not acceptable when all the other OSes are getting it right. I still love OS X and Macs.

What do you say, does ANYONE have a REAL fix for this?

Thanks,

bitsNpieces :rolleyes:
 
Lord have mercy!! Finally other people who are experiencing this problem. I've written on another forum about this and they didn't think it was anything. It's more noticable for people coming from Windows. Am I right in that the problem is only on the Laptops (powerbook, iBook)? Or is it something that's been introduced with OS X? I used to work at a print house using OS 9 on desktops and never noticed it.

Now I own a Powerbook and use an iBook at work. Both seem to have this mouse setting.

Anyway I'm desparately wanting a fix aswell. I prefer Windows style, quick 1:1 movement... I don't want the mouse making calculations for me. I can't get things done as fast.

Hopefully there is a solution out there.
 
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