Michael Voong HCI Researcher @ Birmingham University

Mac Mouse Acceleration

Am I the only one that has problems with the default mouse acceleration in Mac operating systems? This was one my main problems when I switched to a Mac over a year ago. It just feels ‘odd’ compared to windows, and more sluggish. As far as I’m aware, this happens with all external mice. I installed SteerMouse, which changes the acceleration curves to be more linear, but began to ponder whether it was possible to get used to the Mac acceleration. Over the next few days I’m going to run a little experiment.

• Day 1: this feels so weird! If I don’t move the mouse fast enough, it feels like I’m on a surface of viscous syrup. Changing the tracking to ‘fast’ in the Keyboard & Mouse prefs pane doesn’t seem to make a difference at all.
• Day 2: I’ve gotten used to it. Wow. That’s unexpected - I guess this demonstrates ergonomic adaptability. Which means we as designers must be careful - to take advantage of this as less as possible - which is the only way to drive forward the development of more usable systems.

Other apps that might make the mouse feel more like in Windows: USB Overdrive and ControllerMate.

I just purchased a MB pro. The mouse is driving me crazy - the biggest problem is when I am trying to select menu items or small buttons immediately after a long distance movement of the pointer. I seem to either overshoot/undershoot the target. Strangely, when using the touchpad everything feels fine! From googling this it seems the problem has to do with the mouse acceleration curve on OS X - but honestly, I really don’t want to know or care about such details. And this is not just a windows vs mac type debate. I regularly use many flavors of Unix/Linux as well as Windows and the mouse behaves the same on these platforms. But not on MAC. It seems sort of like standard keyboard vs alternate keyboard layout type of issue. I just hope that like you, I can get used to it. However, since I work with computers (windows/linux) and use the Mac at home - I wonder if my brain will adjust?