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Comment by blauditore | Hacker News Reader

I feel the same. It almost seems like a meme to me by now.

I've used various different laptops (Macbooks, Windows machines, Linux-based ones, Chromebooks), and while the experience was certainly different, Macbooks never felt particularly superior. They seem to be configured (by default) to move cursors fairly slowly compared to the competition, but it's a lot about just getting used to it. There are of course some cheap, jumpy touchpads out there, but this doesn't apply to all non-Macbooks, by far.

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I just booted a MacBook Air into Mint recently and I think I finally figured out what the difference is:

Mac allows the cursor to move quickly, but where it differs & excels is how fast it decelerates or stops the cursor.

On Linux, I am always overshooting what I'm trying to click on even when I make the mouse tracking speed very very slow. On Mac I can keep the tracking speed high and jump around quickly but still manage to stop right where I need to every time.

So either, it's faster to register you're slowing down/stopping OR it slows down at a faster rate than your finger is slowing down (vs faithfully tracking your finger)... or both?

Edit: This is true for the handling of external mice too, it's not just the trackpad. The difference is night and day, and overshooting things is frustrating with a normal mouse as well as the touchpad.

Interesting. Lower latency? Or maybe doing some predictive slowing by over-accelerating the slowing as soon as it detects a change in speed or pressure?

I'm thinking either sensitivity is lowered as deceleration begins, or deceleration is over-emphasized as you say. I can move really fast then stop completely dead even as I'm sure my by-no-means-steady hands are not that precise and are probably still very slightly moving as I'm "stopped".

This is a perfect description of input latency. You stop moving your finger over the target, but the cursor keeps moving for another 33-50ms, causing you to overshoot.

Very interesting, TIL. That's certainly a simpler explanation

You've hit the nail on the head. The real difference is input latency.

Tweaking acceleration curves will not help overcome latency of 2-3 frames which is common on Linux compositors (33-50 ms of delay, causing target overshoots).

The acceleration curve on the Mac trackpad is unparalleled. I wonder if it’s possible to reverse engineer it using a mouse (or a “fake” mouse via a teensy or something). That being said, I can’t stand using a mouse with the same acceleration, I have to install an app to disable it.

are the chromeOS touchpad drivers open source?

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