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by snom370 5754 days ago
I can't use a mouse on a Mac for extended periods of time due to the mouse acceleration curve problem. I've never experienced them as unreliable or garbage, but I just don't like using them.

Using synergy and an external Linux PC to drive the mouse solves the problem. But I like the Mac touchpads so much that the mouse problem sort of disappears, especially now with the new external touchpad. Now, I find even using a mouse (or touchpad) on other Windows / Linux computers is slightly annoying.
3 comments
elblanco 5754 days ago
It's not even a matter of preference, or just needing to use it to get used to it. It's like trying to drive a car where the steering wheel is covered in different grades of molasses and motor oil. It's actually physically tiring fighting the curve trying to just point to things on the screen. After 30 minutes my entire arm aches. I thought for a while it was the particular mouse I was using, I must have gone through $200 in mice and pointing devices trying to find something that worked better until I stumbled upon some arcane command line command to just turn it off.

Completely non-discoverable, some of the worst physical input design I've seen since the Nintendo Virtual Boy. I really don't understand it either, I don't remember having nearly this consternation pre-OSX

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calloc 5754 days ago
The acceleration curve makes so much sense to me, for some reason it feels right. Whereas I hate using Windows or Linux because it doesn't have the same sort of curve.

The touch-pads are extremely nice though. I have used Mac's since 2001 beginning with an iBook and since then find it difficult to use a mousing surface on other manufacturers laptops. It just doesn't have the same smooth feel, there is more resistance or it doesn't correctly pick up on my motions, the surface Apple uses to cover their touch pads is something special and different.

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snom370 5754 days ago
The acceleration curve came directly from NeXT (traditional Mac OS had a more similar curve to Win/Linux). So my best guess is that Steve Jobs also likes this acceleration curve ;)
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angrycoder 5754 days ago
The acceleration is easily disabled. Just run this command in terminal.

defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.mouse.scaling -1

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mrtron 5754 days ago
I wouldn't call the secret preferences macs have easily disabled. The vast majority of users encountering this problem won't be able to take advantage of this!
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weaksauce 5754 days ago
True it's not the easiest to do manually but there are plenty of preference panes that can open up this feature if you are motivated enough to fix it.
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snom370 5754 days ago
The problem is that I don't want to disable the acceleration entirely, I just want a _different_ acceleration curve: http://db.tidbits.com/article/8893

I'm not sure if this command will help with that.

But in any case, I'm sold on the trackpad now, and I'm not going back. :)

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