Mouse Cursor History (and why I made my own) | Hacker News Reader

Mouse Cursor History (and why I made my own)

youtube.com

90 pointsnailer28 comments

I use his mouse cursor pack - it's worth installing and is absolutely awesome. Posy is one of my favorite creators on YouTube currently - his dedication to using zero stock footage, zero stock music (he produces all of the music in his videos!), and very high quality production/in depth knowledge make his videos super amazing to watch.

He’s also got a very strange and endearing sense of humor!

Been using his cursor pack since I first saw this video a couple of years ago. It was actually a pretty interesting history to learn about, and he made some really nice, simple cursors!

Timestamps:

History of OS cursors from System 1.0 to recent MacOS, and Windows 1.0 to Windows 10: https://youtu.be/YThelfB2fvg?t=169

How the current Windows 10 cursor is wonky: https://youtu.be/YThelfB2fvg?t=430 (probably the most interesting part of the video)

He ends up fixing the wonky mouse cursor in Windows and makes the download available in the show notes. http://www.michieldb.nl/other/cursors/

I tried his cursors for a moment and they looked strange to me. I went back to my cursors of choice, which are the auto-generated black cursors from Windows 10/11. (Accessibility → Mouse pointer and touch → lime cursor → Choose another color → black. It looks good at 1x and 2x.

If I used Windows I would definitely use that cursor pack!

Only partially related but Posy is a great creator, his DSM LCD video is one of my all-time favorite videos. https://youtu.be/eGQQWIbD-nM

An excellent YouTube channel, and some excellent cursors —- I’ve used them on all my Windows machines after having found this video last year.

Thanks, Posy!

I always assumed the Mac cursor is black just to be different from Windows, but the narrator in the video prefers it black, so maybe it is just another small thing that Apple got right and Microsoft didn't.

btw. random fact: the Mac cursor stays the same when switching to dark mode. Just something I checked just now (I don't usually use dark mode).

The inverse (Windows deliberately not looking like Mac) seems likely to have been at least partially responsible. Apple were litigious about their design language - with the ‘trash can’ being a particular point of contention. Microsoft were probably at least a little cautious about looking too Mac-like. Indeed Apple in the end did sue MS for stealing ’look and feel’ elements in 1988 (literally the context in which the term look-and-feel was popularized), ultimately unsuccessfully - except for the trash can being recognized as distinctive enough to not be allowed to be copied, leading to Windows’ 90s classic ‘recycle bin’.

You can invert the cursor color on windows fwiw

You can change the colors (the default is black with a white outline, not just black) on Mac, too.

I used to find it irritating that I had to jiggle the mouse to find the cursor, because it doesn't really stick out on screen when it is white or black and I have a lot of screen area. Then I tried turning the cursor yellow with a black border. It is great, it's obvious where it is with a glance now.

Intrigued by your comment, I've just tried it. Man, it's really working. It's really effective, I'll try to adapt to the colours and see if I keep it!

Windows 1.0, with a white cursor, was released in November 1985.

Mac OS 1.0, with a black cursor, was released in January 1984. Its predecessor, Lisa OS, with a black cursor, was January 1983.

So if anything, maybe Windows cursor was white just to be different from Mac.

But also, according to Wikipedia, Windows 1.0 was inspired by Visi On [1], which also used a white cursor (pointing upwards, rather than up-left) [2]. So it might have just copied that?

But just from a logical standpoint, Mac always used a white document area with black text in windows, where it would make sense to have a black cursor easy to see. While Visi On continued the MS-DOS/terminal tradition of white text on a black background in its windows, where a white cursor would be more visible. But a quick Google search though doesn't seem to produce any authoritative answer for why Windows 1.0, with its white backgrounds, would choose a white cursor. All I can find is [3] but it's paywalled and none of the usual cache/archive services can access it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_1.0x

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visi_On

[3] https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-default-mouse-cursor-black-...

Very interesting video! I have to say I have not really considered changing my cursor much since the heyday of ~2006 Myspace cursor type things. I've sent this tab to my home desktop to give it a try when I get home.

I often find myself gravitating towards sleeker, flashier looking cursors (like a chevron) but sooner or later get annoyed or confused and switch back to the old angled-triangle-wtih-tail.

I'm interested if anyone else has thought more about mouse cursors in recent years and what your findings were!

Great video.

I hadn't known of the creator's cursor set, but like him I've found that a black, white-outlined cursor is generally more visible/usable which in combination with the awkward shape of the default Windows cursors led me to install ported macOS cursors on my Windows machines. Under Linux, the white-outlined black cursors that ship with major DEs look good enough as is so there I just use those.

I didn't click but thought "why would you want to log your mouse movements? Analyze them to what end? I suppose you could automate or infer something from the trails? Number of clicks? Keyboard to mouse frequency, time spent.

Then started working though the logging, insights while reading the comments.

Pressure sensitive mouse buttons may be helpful. Same with haptic feedback when dragging over heavier buttons.

I still own a Logitech iFeel mouse from the late 90's early 2000's. It's a heavier mouse that offers force feedback on the desktop, specifically as you move over icons and such. It also gave force feedback in games, such as Half Life.

Unfortunately on Windows the drivers havn't worked since probably XP, but on Linux I did figure out how to drive the motor, and wrote a PoC to get it working again. It'd need support from the DE and games to really be useful, though.

Woah, I have been watching all of this guy's videos recently, I love how deep he dives into niche topics. His video on segmented displays got me very interested in the clever designs that came out of technical constraints, and challenged me to get back to design a little bit. It's nice to see him linked here

Possible subtitle: Or How Apple Got It Right Once Again

Video is from 2018, title should be updated.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com