Until recently, I have mostly used my MacBook Pro without an external mouse, but I recently hooked it up to a KVM switch that allows me to share my external keyboard, mouse, and monitor with my Linux box. I always felt that the mouse support in OSX was lacking, even though I wasn’t quite able to pin it down. But now that I’m comparing the same mouse on two systems, the difference is quite pronounced.
I’m used to pretty sensitive mouse settings, as I like to avoid unnecessary mouse movement. Therefore, I have my tracking speed set to the second to fastest setting in OSX. Fast movements seem OK, but whenever I move the mouse slowly, the pointer movement becomes annoyingly jerky. Unfortunately “Tracking Speed” is the only setting that OSX offers. I wonder if a way to set speed and acceleration independently (like I remember from Windows) would solve the problem. I used to think that the mouse itself or the mousing surface was to blame, but now that I’m using the same mouse on Linux without any problems (both fast and slow movements are smooth and precise), this turns out not to be the case.
Has anybody else noticed this? Are there any hacks or software utilities to improve the mouse support in OSX?
Update: Apparently this is a known issue:
While some people seem to prefer the Mac’s mouse behavior, I agree with those that find it extremely annoying. I briefly tried iMouseFix but it didn’t seem to improve things for me. I am currently evaluating USB Overdrive, a $20 shareware application. Among other things (such as mapping buttons to actions, etc.), it allows speed and acceleration to be modified independently. Right now I am trying a very high speed combined with a relatively modest acceleration of 70%, and it definitely seems to improve things quite a bit. I’ll probably have to play with the settings some more until it feels perfect, though.