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Windows and Linux (Ubuntu Gnome or whatnot) have a much much much more responsive mouse input for me than Mac OS X. Maybe some people don't notice this, but for those who do, it's very annoying. It's inconceivable to me how somebody doesn't notice it, especially if OS X is supposed to be for graphic designers who use the mouse a lot. Maybe they all have Wacom or some such tablets.

It's much harder to hit any buttons because you can't just speedily mouse over it, you have to use visual feedback to inch on it. And it causes much more stress and strain on your hand, wrist, elbow, eyes and everything. No matter what mouse hardware you are using. The same mice work very well in Windows and Ubuntu. The OS X drivers just suck. I've tried USB overdrive, mouse settings and everything. The basic lag just doesn't go away.

Too bad some keyboard shortcuts like for scrolling work really bad in OSX too - the cursor stays in one place when going up or down pages meaning you have to use the mouse.

The cursor jumping is another crazy issue indeed. You never know where it is going to be once you go over a certain speed threshold.

(Writing this from OS X. Otherwise it's quite nice.)

Caveat: I used to play Quake where the difference between 60 and 77 FPS is life and death. Everybody used high rate CRT:s and clocked their mice to 500 Hz or so. Here's a real mouse test: http://www.esreality.com/?a=post&id=1265679 . I'm annoyed at the mushy interfaces that electronics could have gotten rid of decades ago. It's somehow just a less stressful situation to take photos or browse them in a camera with less delay for example.




Counterpoint: the Windows mouse acceleration is terrible. Messing with the cursor speed doesn't help, it's impossible not to end up with jumpy moves and constantly overshoot buttons and menu options (doubly so menu options since the single convenient always-at-the-top-of-your-screen menubar isn't present).

If you grew up with one system, the other is horribly broken and I'd argue nearly impossible to learn. I'm a graphic designer who used Windows for years at work without ever "getting used to it", even if I never came home and touched my Mac. Now I work full time at home and it's heaven to have a mouse/cursor that does what I want it to do.


Seconded, the Mac acceleration curve is terrible.

Strangely on some installations it doesn't seem to come into effect. For example, I have never noticed it on a MacBook using the touchpad. And I could have sworn it was not there when I first installed Snow Leopard.

But right after installing Lion I had to spend the first few hours hunting down utilities to get the mouse back into a usable state...


Yea, I pretty much cannot stand OSX for exactly this reason.




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