Mac mouse acceleration and other curiosities

Couple of months ago I bought a mac mini (the previous, non-aluminium version) and I was a happy man, right until the point I connected all the peripherals and tried to setup my mouse speed and acceleration. The mouse was Logitech M705 Marathon Mouse. I immediately noticed that I couldn’t adjust the speed and acceleration to my liking using the OS X 10.6. My own preferences in Windows are very simple: no acceleration and somewhat high cursor speed. I did manage to get speed somewhat right but I still couldn’t adjust the acceleration which was horrible frankly. At medium/low speeds the cursor would hardly move, and when you move the mouse faster the cursor would just fly away. 

I was quite intrigued and I went to download and install Logitech own Mouse Control Center which only slightly solved the problem. But then again, I was quite cross at the time because I just can’t stand mouse cursor which doesn’t move with pixel perfect accuracy. You don’t see much doctors using ancient tools to operate do you? In any case, I was looking for some other solution, because, surely there must me some solution to the problem in the computer world because usually, there is one. But I was quite astonished to find out that there wasn’t. Well, there is one solution and that is to buy Microsoft’s mouse and use their drivers which have flat acceleration curve and as users say, it works perfectly. As I had my new Logitech I didn’t want to buy a new mouse.

I installed and uninstalled Steermouse, some additional mouse preferences, terminal hacks, USB Overdrive and some other stuff, but *none* gave me the simplicity and usability of no mouse acceleration. Eventually I returned to Logitech Mouse Control Center, which for me gives the least worst results. 

But I’m writing this because I accidentally found a way how to somewhat solve the problem and get exactly the same mouse acceleration and speed settings as you may have in Windows. Yes, you read that right, somewhat ;)

First you have to enable VNC on Mac and and then you have to connect with a VNC program (I use RealVNC). Then you get absolutely identical mouse cursor settings on a Mac, and at the same time you don’t need to use extra keyboard or mouse.

- “But hey Prosperous Poverty, we all know that doing anything remotely is slower that doing it locally. “

That is true but if you look at the screen of your mac, you will see that there is absolutely no slowdown caused by the remote control from the “remote” computer. But here comes the good part, if you connect mac to your windows monitor you can switch desktops with a press of a button (switch different source) and gain normal acceleration curve and a bigger pixel count on your mac (if your primary monitor was larger than mac one). Another thing you gain is that you can always control your Mac with VNC and that works quite well by itself.

Of course you can see the hole the size of a supertanker and that is the need for another computer for control and there is some unwieldiness with the monitor. By latter I mean that you must switch inputs on your main monitor or you can use the mac’s monitor which is probably a bit dislocated to your main computer’s keyboard + mouse.

In any case, I’m quite disappointed with the whole mouse acceleration issue on the mac, and I’m just hoping (probably in vain) for the problem to be solved. Trouble is, very few mac users consider it a problem, and that is because majority of new users probably have mac laptops (trackpads have ok curves) and the other users just don’t complain enough, or “they get used to it”. Yes, you can get used to take someone’s tooth out using a sledgehammer, but that’s not the point. If I ever knew about this problem I probably wouldn’t buy a trackpad-less mac.

Apple OS X 10.5.4 on MSI Wind [Updated]

As the title (almost) says I managed to install OS X 10.5.4 on my wind. How was this possible? Intel based computers (which includes the wind) has somewhat similar hardware as an apple macbook so people from the hackint0sh community have been working hard to manage to install os x on them. Installing os x on wind was possible some time ago (months really) but it demanded couple of things which weren't that easy to pass over. Firstly you needed a broadcom based wireless card (which you could order from ebay, but for me unfortunately that was out of the question) and an external dvd drive. You needed the wifi card because the default realtek didn't have any drivers for os x so just didn't work, and that was a great roadblock for many wind owners. But few days ago, MSI quite unexpectedly (for me at least) drivers for the integrated wifi card. So I then realized it was time to give os x on wind a go.

I already found two tutorials how to install it.

First is from a guy named Paul at modaco forums. This installation is a bit out of date (but not by much) because I found the second more up-to-date tutorial (25 September 2008) from a guy named Jose Perez at PlanetX64. (btw, you don't need to have dual layer dvd, single layer works too)

His tutorial suggests using a slipstreamed Kalyway "distribution" and he is right about it. The installation is much simpler than Paul's so I recommend it.

But the next problem I had was getting an external dvd drive because my somewhat local shops had some but were dvd readers/writers and not quite cheap as I imagined. So after looking around I realized that I could put my internal dvd drive from my desktop computer into an external enclosing for 3.5in disk (which I already had) and connect it over usb. That worked perfectly. So installing os x was just a matter of installation.

Software installation itself went very easily and smoothly. Additional software installed without problems whatsoever. One problem though are software updates. Well, everything updates without problems, but "point upgrades" ie 10.5.4 to 10.5.5 doesn't work. There are some workarounds to update anyway but I wasted a whole day reinstalling the OS because I didn't manage to get it to work. But those updates are actually pretty minor so I'm not bothered about it very much. In any case some easier methods to update will probably be released.



What works:

webcam
native resolution and color depth
sound
wifi (with realtek drivers)
suspend
fn-hotkeys
touchpad (even better than in windows, you can accelerate it much more)
normal updates
battery indicator is precise

What doesn't work:
speedstep isn't working which is a problem on this subnotebook because the processsor is working at full power all the time so it wastes the battery faster.
point uprades
ethernet? (not really sure about this, didn't work when I was connecting to my router, needs more testing)
some (very rare) windows are clipped at the bottom because of the lack of resolution. Fortunately, this is very rare and all System Preferences can be adjusted without problem.


Haven't tested audio inputs/outputs yet so I'll report later.

[Update]: Deinstalled, couldn't get over the lack of processor throttling (speedstep). I tried some programs kexts (kernel extensions) which amazingly I managed to install, but it seems to me they didn't work. So I'll wait for some other distribution in the future, even though the one I tried (slipstreamed kalyway) isn't bad at all.

Macbook, first few days.

This is a separate update to the post below. After spending few days getting to know the laptop, I have few more insights to share with you my dear reader.

I'm learning more about OS X as we speak but let me tell you that I had smooth sailing all this time.

I'll try to sum up what I have done/learned already. So in no particular order:



Finder as I hinted in my previous post is not that good. It is just unwieldy, clunky, almost like trying to tune a watch with a lawn mower. I can't drag & drop Applications to the dock, create shortcut to it. I did found out some roundabout way to do it but I'm amazed how some simple, and obvious operation won't work.



There are other problems as well. There is no easy way to launch finder window by keyboard. This seems odd because there are around 987 different keyboard shortcuts concerning finder/dock/etc but no keyboard shortcut to run finder. I actually do find it convenient to just press win-e and windows explorer shows up. So far I have managed to do launch finder by using two keyboard shortcuts (all of those are custom) and a click: command (in my case control)-D, then click on the desktop (to show finder menu) and then command-E. First command shows the desktop, the other one launches the new finder window. It is a bit inconvenient but I'm searching for a better solution. I could write a book about finder but let me just add some other annoyances. Keyboard navigation in finder is a like walking with one crutch but missing both legs. Opening of the folders and navigation is completely unintuitive, and I have no idea why would anyone think that enter/return key would be best suited for renaming files. I mean, there are like 3 ways to rename a file and there is only one way to launch it (command-down). I'm so used to launching files with enter (when browsing files with keyboard) that I searched the net and found a little program at returnopen.com which assigns enter for launching.

Display as I said in my previous post is not great. And I can only confirm it here. The vertical viewing angle is just horrible, not to mention inverse hinge which limits the movement of display, and have a nasty habit of trying to squeeze any cable you have behind your display. Font smoothing is not as bad as I may suggested at first and generally looks ok. But on some web pages text looks awful. I'll try other settings and report here but I seem to have little luck because I have trouble telling the difference.

Speaking of hardware, I did say that laptop is quiet, and I can only reaffirm it here. It really is extremely quiet, HDD is barely audible if you lean your head against the keyboard and cpu fan can't be heard when normally using the laptop. It can be heard when you play a game (wow for example), but it is anything but loud and comes silent very soon after you close the game. I have never heard it ramp up the speed while doing normal applications (photoshop, web, etc) which is excellent.

One (or is it like 10th?) more thing that bothers me about hardware is no hardware shock protection. Every manufacturer now includes disks on their laptops with sudden acceleration detection to park heads and prevent them from hitting the platters. This would be minor thing if there is some quick standby option. But frankly there isn't. When you close the lid or select stand by from the Apple menu, you have to wait at least 15 seconds (I need to time it though, but seems like ages) for the LED in the corner to start flashing (and the laptop is ready to be moved). I have no windows laptop to compare it to, but it seems that time can be shorter. Also lacking is hibernation as normal standby does waste power, and you can hear components whirring, and buzzing when you crane your neck to the keyboard.

Touchpad is a bit better as I firstly thought, probably as I get used to it though. But there is problem nonetheless. The touchpad is actually rather large and when you are typing my thumbs are touching the touchpad in the upper corners. This I'm afraid cannot be avoided because keyboard is leveled with touch pad. This contact is bad because my cursor then has a habit of running around the screen, and sometimes activating the dock. The option for detection of accidental mouse input is turned off, but I do think it needs a bit more tweaking.


Ctrl-w Ctrl-q shortcuts are somewhat confusing. Why is this that I can close every window in the program with ctrl-w, but I need ctrl-q to actually shut down the application itself? I can understand the inclusion of ctrl-q if say you have multiple open pictures in photoshop and you want to exit the program at once, but what is wrong with closing the program with ctrl-w if I'm closing the last window in the application?. Another "excellent" thing is that you can't close finder with ctrl-q. So you definitely have to use ctrl-w. All in all, you have to pay attention what program are you using, how many windows does it have open to decide to use ctrl-q or ctrl-w. This is just time wasting bullshit.

There is more bullshit when handling applications. Lets say you have firefox window minimized and then you switch focus to ms word by command-tab.Then after you are finished with word, you command-tab to firefox. But firefox won't maximize/restore automatically. You have to do it manually. This was even more confusing at first with that "red x on the window corner doesn't actually close the application" (or CRAP for short) policy. I can already see my old man freaking out when he sees it.

And there is this thing when ctrl-tabing there are occasions when you switch to your application but the main window doesn't have focus. I need to reproduce this problem more and see whats the problem though.

Sharing music with itunes is good, but somewhat disappointing because you can only listen to that shared music, nothing else really. Which is a shame. Even though you own the music it still isn't yours. And too bad I can't remotely sync my ipod.

Keyboard has music control shortcuts but they don't work always unfortunately. Volume shortcuts do work ok but it would be much better to have a different icon when the volume is muted or completely down. I'll do this more graphically if I have more time.

Speaking of keyboard, I'm completely dumbfounded why there are no alt key shortcuts. Something like alt-f to open file menu etc. Or there aren't any underlined menu choices. Is that so fucking hard to do?




I was amazed that apache web server is included by default which is great news and it is activated by literally 3 clicks. PHP is included too, but you have to edit the .conf file by removing a comment from one line. If you don't know how to do it by following instructions on the web, you don't even know what programming is. So don't bother to criticize this.

Two days ago I was amazed by iWeb application. I thought it was just a crap web editor, but even though it is a crap web editor it is still amazing. Why for the name of baby jesus is that? It has great templates for your web site. It is extremely easy to just fill out the template pages and voila, you have professional looking website. There aren't like 10K templates though so I can imagine your site will look like other thousand's sites, but I still have to see a site made in iweb. And yes I have surfed a long time. So this is not really a problem. I think one can go even further and after creating your site with some iweb template, to manually edit/photoshop images associated with the pages so they can look almost completely different than the template. So yes, next time when somebody asks me to make a website about X, I'll just take a template, enter the text, remove or add an element here and there and presto, in 1h time I'll have a great looking web site which would take me like 2 weeks to do in dreamweaver. (and leaning much on csszengarden.com for inspriation). It is just a bit too bad that there aren't like 100 more templates;) There are sites who create templates just for iweb but they are not free unfortunately. Actually they are quite expensive and crappy looking.

I forgot to mention in my first post about this macbook that there is no mini-dvi to dvi (or at least vga) adapter included in the box. This makes me a bit sad because I'll have to order at least dvi adapter because I have external monitors for macbook waiting to be used. I'm not sure I could use (mini-dvi -> dvi) -> (dvi->vga) adapter but if it works I'll make sure to write about it (update: doesn't work).


Images of the laptop are arriving sooner rather than later. (and I have to test out lightroom workflow. God I hate those buzzwords.