Hacker News Reader

Comment by eykanal | Hacker News Reader

Longtime Mac user here... for what it's worth, I don't know what the OP is referring to. I use both Mac and Windows regularly (home vs work), and I don't see a noticeable difference. Maybe I've just gotten used to it. Definitely isn't a problem for me.

View on HN

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.

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

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...

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.

I did not, for the longest time.

That is, until I installed Team Fortress 2 for office LAN party. Having played it on Windows, it was a world of difference - OS X version seemed so inaccurate, even after getting rid of acceleration.

When you're playing a game like that you become highly attuned to the characteristics of your input device.

I find the same thing happens when playing console games and the "look" stick acceleration curves are completely different between games. It is disorienting until you get your bearings and adjust to the speed and acceleration of each input system.

Just as switching between Windows and OS X means switching from CTRL to CMD, you kind of have to go with the flow on mouse speed, acceleration, and so on.

I play TF2 almost hours every day and I'm often in the top 5 players in the server when I play sniper or soldier.

I play in Mac OS X and I use a Razer Deathadder 3G Spawn. No extra drivers.

However, I tried wiggling the mouse pointer and I can't see a lag on my iMac, but if I grab a Finder-window and wiggle it left-right very fast I think there's actually some lag.

I can't really compare TF2 to Windows since in Windows I use the Razer drivers. But yeah, the mouse in TF2 in Windows feels a bit more "glued on".

Edit: Just tried the Explorer-wiggling in Windows and it too felt a bit laggy.

I really wonder if the "input lag" problem is as simple as a design difference. For instance, if on Windows the mouse position is polled immediately prior to rendering the screen but on OS X it's polled immediately after you would get a different feel.

That would introduce about 8ms of "lag" if you're really dialled in and able to perceive it.

This is part of the problem, I think. If enough people noticed it, it would have been fixed a long time ago. It's probably similar to how some people don't notice the rainbow effect on DLP projectors, and others do.

What's weird is that it seems like people that started mousing on a different platform than OS X notice it far more than dedicated OS X users.

I had the same reaction. Then I realized that I've never used my Mac for high performance gaming of any kind. As a longtime Mac user (since 1984!), it just seems wrong to play games on a Mac.

I'm glad someone posted about this mouse problem. It is the most annoying thing that prevented me from switching to a mac for a long time. I was telling my friends that the mouse was not behaving the same way in Mac Os X and Windows. They were all saying that I was imagining it. I switched to Mac a year ago and got use to it, but I can still feel a difference.

I used a Mac and a PC at work side by side (Often working on the mac when the PC was waking, booting or installing some security upgrades which was a big part of the week, Vista wasn't really any good). But in mousing the difference was clear, Windows had the advantage. I tried switching the mice back and forth but no help.

I also had Ubuntu at home and at my parents' place, and it had the same simple responsive mouse as Vista.

Now I've gone full Mac but it still constantly annoys me at work. If it weren't for the other good things in the OS...

I notice the lag on my Mac. It feels like the mouse is stuck in mud compared to using the mouse on the Windows. When I first got my Macbook about 3 years ago, I tried like 6 or 7 different mouse and acceleration software, and they all acted the same. The trackpad works fine though.

Do you use a mouse? I've never been able to notice it with a trackpad (because trackpads are inherently less precise anyway, and seldom used for gaming). It has been painfully noticeable on both Macbook Pros I've owned (one circa Tiger, the other circa Lion).

I was thinking the same thing. I've tried the Magic Mouse, Logitech Anywhere, and Logitech Marathon all to no avail. I returned them all eventually and now I'm back to the trackpad.

Just from anecdotal evidence from someone who can detect the lag with 3 different mice, it's not there with the trackpad.

Honestly, I'm not convinced that lag is the problem more so than acceleration. I've never been able to disable acceleration since Tiger, so I don't have that information. Since it's quite reasonable to have acceleration with a trackpad, I've never had any problem with Mac trackpads.

Personally, I use a mouse all the time, I'm not a fan of trackpads. I'm not much of a gamer, though, which may explain why I haven't noticed the 1/30th of a second lag.

Same here, only Mac though. I don't game and haven't noticed this "lag". I currently have a MacBook Pro, and an iMac with a Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad. Don't see it anywhere.

Agreed, I've never noticed any kind of problem - I'll happily play Left 4 Dead for hours with the MacBook trackpad.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com