6 ms·

The mouse acceleration curve on Mac drives me insane. There is a way to set it to "0" with some command line incantation, but it still does not set it to 0. Al

The mouse acceleration curve on Mac drives me insane. There is a way to set it to "0" with some command line incantation, but it still does not set it to 0. Also, the fact that I can't independently control the scroll direction of mice and trackpads is insane to me. The whole selling point of Apple is that "it just works" , but I can't even get my mouse working properly! That's like the lowest bar for an OS.

ryukafalz 5y ago
> Also, the fact that I can't independently control the scroll direction of mice and trackpads is insane to me. Oh yeah I just plugged a mouse into a work Mac recently and was super confused at this. Yes I’ve gotten used to natural scrolling on touchpads by now, but no that doesn’t mean I want it on a scroll wheel!
- mattnewton 5y ago
  This starts to make sense when you see the mice that apple sells don't have wheels, they have a touch surface on top. And if you aren't using an apple mouse you're off the happy path and stuck toggling settings forever.
  - ryukafalz 5y ago
    Yeah, I used to use a Magic Mouse years ago. They now aggravate my RSI terribly though. This kind of thing feels like Apple telling me their stuff is not for me.
411111111111111 5y ago
> "it just works" It does just work. You're just using it wrong. Keep that second sentence in mind whenever people say that first line and you'll never have any issues with apple fans
- spicybright 5y ago
  I'm a fan of apple MacOS as of late, specifically because the rigidity leads to easier computer usage to me. I'd hesitate to lump all apple fans around the few vocal ones. The vast majority of people that like apple don't push a cult of "it just works". Most people I know just recognize a computer as a computer, not an identity.
  - babypuncher 5y ago
    What I find amusing is just how much of an identity being anti-Apple has be come. You know, the people who will jump at any vague opportunity to profess their hate for anything Apple. I used to be in that camp. I gave up on fanboyism years ago and nowadays I've found I like almost every platform for different reasons.
- jkubicek 5y ago
  My secret to happiness on a Mac: focus your energy on figuring out how the designers want you to use a tool. Don't fight the design, work with it. Don't change the defaults, live with them. Some folks love to fiddle with settings and tweak configs to get everything just right... but this is a recipe for disappointment when an upgrade removes the secret config you found or hard-codes a setting that was previously available as a preference.
  - freedomben 5y ago
    I'm not sure why you're being downvoted because your opinion is (in my opinion) perfectly valid. I spent 6 to 12 months forced onto a Mac by the company I worked for and I reached the same conclusion. Learning to subjugate one's personal preferences to the way the designers designed it is a good strategy on Mac (and to some extent Gnome on Linux). I spent untold hours on Mac trying to recreate my Linux environment, and after cobbling together a number of different tools (some paid, some not) I got it pretty close - and then a new version of the OS came out and broke everything. It took a few months before most of the tools I used were updated, and due to accessibility API changes some of them never did get updated.
  - 5y ago
ryandrake 5y ago
How do you "zero mouse acceleration" people survive? I have three monitors side by side. If I went with zero mouse acceleration, I'd need a 3 meter wide mouse pad in order to be able to move the mouse cursor edge to edge! Or do you do that mouse bicycle move where you constantly pick the mouse up, bring it back to its original position, move it some more, pick it back up, and so on? Such a weird subculture :)
- dahfizz 5y ago
  Well the m1 only supports one external monitor so thats not much of an issue ;) I use a Logitech G502 and I just like the high sensitivity. I don't need a huge trackpad or to pick up the mouse. When mouse movent maps 1:1 to pointer movement, your brain and muscle memory can do a much better job at fast & precise movement.
  - electroly 5y ago
    The Mac Studio supports up to 5 monitors.
  - aenis 5y ago
    I used a total of three external monitors with the original m1, via a displaylink hub. Saying "m1 does not support it" is not accurate. Its not like a amd 3950x supports any external monitors, does it?..
    - ben-schaaf 5y ago
      The 3950x isn't a GPU or APU. It doesn't support any display out because that's not it's job. The low end AMD laptop APUs natively drive 3-4 monitors.
    - dahfizz 5y ago
      If you want to be pedantic... The Apple m1 is an SoC, not a CPU. It is not comparable to an AMD 3950X. It is perfectly reasonable to talk about the display capabilities of an SoC, because the GPU and display controllers are built into the SoC. Apple themselves markets the macbook air as supporting: > One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz[1] And yes, I'm aware of the display link hacks. This works by emulating extra GPUs in software (VGC). The m1 supports multiple displays via display link in the same way MacOs runs Gnome via an Ubuntu VM. [1] https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/specs/ https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/specs/
andrewjf 5y ago
> The whole selling point of Apple is that "it just works" It does (generally) just work! However, it works they way they want you to use it. That's fine for me and I usually am happy to adapt. It doesn't mean infinitely configurable.
- caycep 5y ago
  it sort of reminds me of an interview someone did w/ a farmer's market vendor of gourmet jams/jellies....when they had a spread of 29-30 jams, no one bought any because it was too intimidating/confusion/bred indecision or whatever They changed their lineup to 6 jams and sales went thru the roofff
  - dahfizz 5y ago
    Okay, except this is nothing like that. Computer programs can have defaults. When you don't like the default, you go to the settings screen to change it. If you don't want to deal with settings, you never have to open up the screen. But the scroll settings is much more annoying than that. Apple provides two completely independent settings for "Mouse" and "Trackpad". Under each, there is a toggle for scroll direction. If you toggle one, it magically and silently toggles the other as well. That's not "simple", that's not "easy to use", that's 100% bad UX. If there's only one global setting, why present it as two independent options which are magically linked?
    - lwkl 5y ago
      Maybe they should present it as one setting. But linking it makes sense for the vast majority of users. Because if it wasn’t you would see a flood of people asking why their mouse or trackpad is scrolling in the wring direction. I‘m more and more convinced that the Apple way is the right way for the vast majority of users and deeper customization should only be available through the CLI or extensions.
    - dwighttk 5y ago
      > Okay, except this is nothing like that. And yet… desktop Linux isn’t widely popular.
collin128 5y ago
Hated that I couldn't flip scroll direction because I wanted the trackpad to be natural and mouse to be inverted. Found this: https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/ https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/
weiliddat 5y ago
I recently tried https://linearmouse.org/ https://linearmouse.org/ and it seemed to offer both acceleration and sensitivity settings for mice.
KolenCh 5y ago
That’s interesting, may be that’s why I feel it strange when operating a mouse on Windows/Linux? Are there links to this acceleration? Thanks.
1764927 5y ago
The acceleration seems to scale with the mouse sensitivity setting. With the setting at 0 there is very little or no acceleration. You'd need a mouse with adjustable dpi setting to use it like that though.

ryukafalz 5y ago

> Also, the fact that I can't independently control the scroll direction of mice and trackpads is insane to me. Oh yeah I just plugged a mouse into a work Mac recently and was super confused at this. Yes I’ve gotten used to natural scrolling on touchpads by now, but no that doesn’t mean I want it on a scroll wheel!

mattnewton 5y ago
This starts to make sense when you see the mice that apple sells don't have wheels, they have a touch surface on top. And if you aren't using an apple mouse you're off the happy path and stuck toggling settings forever.
- ryukafalz 5y ago
  Yeah, I used to use a Magic Mouse years ago. They now aggravate my RSI terribly though. This kind of thing feels like Apple telling me their stuff is not for me.

411111111111111 5y ago

> "it just works" It does just work. You're just using it wrong. Keep that second sentence in mind whenever people say that first line and you'll never have any issues with apple fans

spicybright 5y ago
I'm a fan of apple MacOS as of late, specifically because the rigidity leads to easier computer usage to me. I'd hesitate to lump all apple fans around the few vocal ones. The vast majority of people that like apple don't push a cult of "it just works". Most people I know just recognize a computer as a computer, not an identity.
- babypuncher 5y ago
  What I find amusing is just how much of an identity being anti-Apple has be come. You know, the people who will jump at any vague opportunity to profess their hate for anything Apple. I used to be in that camp. I gave up on fanboyism years ago and nowadays I've found I like almost every platform for different reasons.
jkubicek 5y ago
My secret to happiness on a Mac: focus your energy on figuring out how the designers want you to use a tool. Don't fight the design, work with it. Don't change the defaults, live with them. Some folks love to fiddle with settings and tweak configs to get everything just right... but this is a recipe for disappointment when an upgrade removes the secret config you found or hard-codes a setting that was previously available as a preference.
- freedomben 5y ago
  I'm not sure why you're being downvoted because your opinion is (in my opinion) perfectly valid. I spent 6 to 12 months forced onto a Mac by the company I worked for and I reached the same conclusion. Learning to subjugate one's personal preferences to the way the designers designed it is a good strategy on Mac (and to some extent Gnome on Linux). I spent untold hours on Mac trying to recreate my Linux environment, and after cobbling together a number of different tools (some paid, some not) I got it pretty close - and then a new version of the OS came out and broke everything. It took a few months before most of the tools I used were updated, and due to accessibility API changes some of them never did get updated.
- 5y ago

ryandrake 5y ago

How do you "zero mouse acceleration" people survive? I have three monitors side by side. If I went with zero mouse acceleration, I'd need a 3 meter wide mouse pad in order to be able to move the mouse cursor edge to edge! Or do you do that mouse bicycle move where you constantly pick the mouse up, bring it back to its original position, move it some more, pick it back up, and so on? Such a weird subculture :)

dahfizz 5y ago
Well the m1 only supports one external monitor so thats not much of an issue ;) I use a Logitech G502 and I just like the high sensitivity. I don't need a huge trackpad or to pick up the mouse. When mouse movent maps 1:1 to pointer movement, your brain and muscle memory can do a much better job at fast & precise movement.
- electroly 5y ago
  The Mac Studio supports up to 5 monitors.
- aenis 5y ago
  I used a total of three external monitors with the original m1, via a displaylink hub. Saying "m1 does not support it" is not accurate. Its not like a amd 3950x supports any external monitors, does it?..
  - ben-schaaf 5y ago
    The 3950x isn't a GPU or APU. It doesn't support any display out because that's not it's job. The low end AMD laptop APUs natively drive 3-4 monitors.
  - dahfizz 5y ago
    If you want to be pedantic... The Apple m1 is an SoC, not a CPU. It is not comparable to an AMD 3950X. It is perfectly reasonable to talk about the display capabilities of an SoC, because the GPU and display controllers are built into the SoC. Apple themselves markets the macbook air as supporting: > One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz[1] And yes, I'm aware of the display link hacks. This works by emulating extra GPUs in software (VGC). The m1 supports multiple displays via display link in the same way MacOs runs Gnome via an Ubuntu VM. [1] https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/specs/ https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/specs/

andrewjf 5y ago

> The whole selling point of Apple is that "it just works" It does (generally) just work! However, it works they way they want you to use it. That's fine for me and I usually am happy to adapt. It doesn't mean infinitely configurable.

caycep 5y ago
it sort of reminds me of an interview someone did w/ a farmer's market vendor of gourmet jams/jellies....when they had a spread of 29-30 jams, no one bought any because it was too intimidating/confusion/bred indecision or whatever They changed their lineup to 6 jams and sales went thru the roofff
- dahfizz 5y ago
  Okay, except this is nothing like that. Computer programs can have defaults. When you don't like the default, you go to the settings screen to change it. If you don't want to deal with settings, you never have to open up the screen. But the scroll settings is much more annoying than that. Apple provides two completely independent settings for "Mouse" and "Trackpad". Under each, there is a toggle for scroll direction. If you toggle one, it magically and silently toggles the other as well. That's not "simple", that's not "easy to use", that's 100% bad UX. If there's only one global setting, why present it as two independent options which are magically linked?
  - lwkl 5y ago
    Maybe they should present it as one setting. But linking it makes sense for the vast majority of users. Because if it wasn’t you would see a flood of people asking why their mouse or trackpad is scrolling in the wring direction. I‘m more and more convinced that the Apple way is the right way for the vast majority of users and deeper customization should only be available through the CLI or extensions.
  - dwighttk 5y ago
    > Okay, except this is nothing like that. And yet… desktop Linux isn’t widely popular.

collin128 5y ago

Hated that I couldn't flip scroll direction because I wanted the trackpad to be natural and mouse to be inverted. Found this: https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/ https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/

weiliddat 5y ago

I recently tried https://linearmouse.org/ https://linearmouse.org/ and it seemed to offer both acceleration and sensitivity settings for mice.

KolenCh 5y ago

That’s interesting, may be that’s why I feel it strange when operating a mouse on Windows/Linux? Are there links to this acceleration? Thanks.

1764927 5y ago

The acceleration seems to scale with the mouse sensitivity setting. With the setting at 0 there is very little or no acceleration. You'd need a mouse with adjustable dpi setting to use it like that though.