Hi all, Considering that I've had problems with this and finally got it sorted, I will cut to the chase first, then explain. I'll post this on a few other forums as well, so you might see this elsewhere if you don't just hang here. Mac OS X has built in mouse acceleration - itself, not a problem. However, there is no way to turn it off, and in Lion especially, the way in which the acceleration functions has changed, being described as scrolling through mud. You move the cursor slowly, it's too slow. Speed up to compensate, and you've moved too far. If you don't want mouse acceleration, the app that I have found that works well, stops mouse acceleration, yet also allows high compatibility with many mice, is Steermouse. Supports my G5 DPI buttons for other functions, and most importantly allows me to completely kill acceleration (which was proving a PITA for gaming!). Under the cursor tab, set tracking speed to 0, and decrease sensitivity to your desired speed. Simple! USB Overdrive, from what I have found, doesn't allow you to completely kill acceleration off; it merely changes makes the acceleration curve more linear, as opposed to the cliff-edge of the standard acceleration curve. ControllerMate works, but is overly large and complex, and is expensive. The Mouse Acceleration pref pane doesn't work anymore (and hasn't for years), but this comment from a user sums up a way that has been going around the internet, but in reality doesn't really work: The problem with this method is that it apparently gives you a slow mouse, and little control of your speeds other than that specified speed. While I haven't tried it as I found my fix first, it might work, so it's here for reference. Hope this helps!
Why do apple deny you such simple mods? I use a macbook pro most days at home and its great, could be so much better if I could make a few small mods without resorting to 3rd party software!
I am not being bias here: A control environment ensure the same experience for everyone, and between Apple computers. Also, it allows you to better manage, test and optimize your (Apple) software for specific hardware configuration. At the end, by controlling everything, the user get's not only the same great and smooth experience between computers, but the system itself works the very same way. The problem with the design and way of thought, is that it gives the user virtually 0 options and control. Now to avoid a flame war, and sound like I am bashing things: -> Linux provides maximum flexibility, and software for Linux also carry the same or almost flexibility. Some programs allows you to even change the name of the program on it's title bar. And as the source code is there and freely available, you can tweak anything the way you want it. The downside is that are submerged with many of what would one call useless options, and makes the experience more difficult. Also, as Linux can be put anywhere even in your microwave (ok, maybe not that extreme), there is no easy setup. You have to make sure that every hardware is fully Linux compatible, and has at least decently made drivers. This is complicated, time consuming, and difficult for most people. But you have have your computer makes you breakfast in the morning. -> Windows tries to be in this in-between world. Some versions of Windows are more flexible then other, some not... by playing in both fields sometimes some bad decision are took on specific lack of features, or design issues. Hardware support is excellent, mainly due to it's large market share, but you can always get the hardware compatibility problem, which can cause system stability issues. And the OS is more difficult to use, compared to MacOS. In addition, Microosft has no control on the user experience. Manufacture can put wtv junk they want on the system, not give you the OS disk, can give you 512MB of RAM for Win7 (or especially Vista), and you get a piss poor experience.. all this is out of Microsoft hands. They can't prevent it. They should, but their aren't. Now they are starting with Windows 8 on tablet and Windows phone 7, but these are small steps, and they did none on desktop/laptop computers. It would be at least nice to limit manufacture to to specific programs that they can install, even if they can find a way around it by blasting the software with 2000 million crap extensions.. at least you have 1 program starting up, and not 200. And force manufacture to give to user Windows official disk and driver disk., and limit the system to 1 Anti-virus trial or free software. Anyway.. this if a bit off topic. Mac OS really allows you to get started fast, and everything everything conveniently available, and everything is perfectly in sync (iTunes for everything) and provide similar experience between Apple products. That's the big advantage of Apple. Microsoft tries to play in that court, but their large company, and communication and different way of thought, hurts Microsoft to achieve this. Example: Windows Media Player 12 AND Zune software. Or, this problem, which is very visible in Vista: Pick one design, already! So in the end, the price for the "Apple experience" if you will, is giving Apple full control on everything, which is very good but at the same time the culprit of Apple system. Same for Linux of Windows. Their advantages is also their disadvantages.
I had a feeling someone was going to say something Goodbytes I'm not going to say much, because I agree with you completely (though Mac OS X is actually pretty customisable, you can tweak little quite a bit in the preferences, I'd say that for the average home user it compares directly with Windows). However, not being able disable mouse acceleration? It's going a bit far.
The slow mouse speed you get after disabling mouse acceleration is usually down to low dpi mice working on a 1:1 ratio, which mouse acceleration is supposed to alleviate when it works properly. Best way around this is to get a good mouse with a decent dpi. I'm very happy with the Razor Deathadder, 1800DPI, afaik the new model doubles this to 3600, I believe there is even a white model for the Mac. The driver also disables mouse acceleration when it is installed, at least on windows. The other way round it would be to increase the physical movement to cursor movement somehow, I don't really know OSX but there must be a way to increase vertical and horizontal sensitivity?
You are right, that is why. The setting for the command in terminal is actually "defaults write -g com.apple.mouse.scaling" followed by a space then a number, ranging from -1 to 10. I should have included that in the OP, my bad! As for getting a high DPI mouse, problem is that I know I'm not going to swap mice just for that My recommendation of Steermouse allows you to slow the scaling down to minimum, 1:1 ratios so that you don't have acceleration, then decrease the sensitivity of the cursor to give you the higher speed that you want.
