On Adam's weblog [livejournal.com], I caught a link to this article [tidbits.com] which describes the problem with the way that Mac OS X accelerates the mouse pointer.
I used to have to do a lot of video editing at work. And for that purpose, we had a G5 available. That was really my first in-depth experience using OS X. I had to use it all of the time. And I always had problems getting the mouse pointer over what I wanted to actually click on. First, I would way overshoot the target, and then it would take me forever to stabilize the pointer over the icon (or whatever I was trying to click).
The article explains:
"For mouse motion to feel natural (at least for most people), the [pointer acceleration] curve has to start by moving upward fairly moderately, then gradually flattening out as the value of X increases. Mac OS X's, curve, however, starts off by being too steep, staying too steep for too long, and then flattening out too abruptly. In practical terms this means that, frequently, as a user tries to use the mouse to move the pointer from point A to point B, the pointer motion feels sluggish. The user then tries to compensate for the sluggishness by moving the mouse faster, and the pointer suddenly goes flying across the screen and overshoots point B."That feeling was incredibly annoying, and really gave me a negative feeling about OS X (along with all of the other annoying things about it). But I could never put my finger on what was wrong with the acceleration. But I had that problem, no matter how I adjusted the pointer speed. And for supposedly being such a user-friendly environment, you sure had to go through a ton of hassle to fix it.
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