Magic Mouse too Sensitive Under Mavericks

georgeny wrote:

You know I have been curious not to see owners of new machine not posting here. Noted that new machines come with magic mouse or track pad. I wondered do they work okay on new machines versus our older updated OS machines?

George-

I posted some months back in this thread. I had this exact problem with my brand new iMac that shipped with Mavericks- so yes it's on new Macs too.

There seem to be lots of subtle factors that contribute to the "uncommanded scrolling" or jumps that occur when clicking with Mavericks and the Mighty Mouse. I had to really pay attention, but I did catch myself on occasion touching the mouse every so slightly with another finger while scrolling or clicking with the Index finger. The solution for me was the MagicPrefs application. I defined a scroll area just along the very top of the mouse. It runs the full length of the mouse from front to back, but ignores the left and right extremes of the mouse. This reduced my problem about 90%. Not completely, but I can live with it.

Dave

I agree with Dave. I actually went back to using my old mighty mouse. I was told by the mac store that their other design firm clients do not use the magic mouse for all the same reasons in this thread. Overall, I am not crazy about Mavericks and wish I had stuck with Lion. Disappointed with the mac "upgrade" in terms of operating system and mostly the mouse (a huge element of control over my work)!

I'm not sure if anybody else has mentioned it, but if I rest just one finger on the mouse (i.e., over where the left mouse button would be) while I'm mousing around and clicking, I get the annoying jumpy behaviour that everyone here is seeing. However, if I rest two fingers on the mouse (i.e., index finger on the left button area, middle finger on the right button area) and use it, it doesn't jump around at all. But you can't right click that way. And it also feels like it might cause RSI. But apart from that...

Maybe that's how the person who designed this mouse and/or the drivers uses the mouse, with two fingers resting on it at all times?

Anyway, I'm off to try MagicPrefs now -- thanks to the person who suggested that! Fingers crossed it helps...

Was chatting with a friend last night who has Mavericks and mighty mouse, but had no problem with wobble. She is not using the "Secondary Click" feature, aka "Right Click". She does the more traditional Apple Ctrl-click. So I turned my "Secondary Click" feature off.

On a quick use, it seems better. Will keep playing around.

Could the attempt to implement "right click" on a magic mouse be causing the problem? Did previous versions of the OS implement the same feature with magic mouse?

I found a "work around" solution. I downloaded and installed MagicPrefs. Then I used trial and error adjustments to the scoll and gesture features to minimize the sensetivity of the magic mouse.

Turning off double click proposed solution

I tried this and for a few moments was hopeful, was working fine then suddenly once again started opening things and bouncing all over screen. Seems that if haven't used for a while when you try it again works for a short period of time no matter what your settings are. Then something overloads, whatever, and takes over with a mind of it's own.

Without a doubt this is one of the most frustrating BUGS I have ever encountered on a Mac!!! I continue to wonder if Apple doesn't care or simply can't fix without a major update on Maverick.

I had read somewhere in a post that the person writing wished they had never upgraded to Maverick, I certainly share that feeling. Between this and some calendar bugs I really long for the Mountain Lion days not so long ago. I surely have NOT upgraded any of my other machines to it.

I remain hopeful that sooner or later Apple will issue a major upgrade to this and correct the many bugs. The three main areas that are a problem are Magic Mouse/Track Pad, Desktop calendar fails to keep synched with other units yet they function perfectly ( iPad iPhone ), and HP scanner printer no longer scans via HP must use Preview. I will admit once the learning curve was over using Preview to scan and save is actually pretty good. Trouble is all of these bugs are too much used functions.

George in NY

I installed a user script to fix this:

"disable_google_maps_scroll_zoom.user.js"

https://gist.github.com/henrik/1062679

Enjoy!

I guess my comment is yet another "me-too". I too am faced with the problem of the excessive sensitivity of the magic mouse - but also of the trackpad.

Both work fine with regular interactions: scrolling in "regular" documents: text, preview, web pages. But outside those uses, the scrolling becomes erratic. Most complains are with web mapping applications: google maps, but also bing maps, and pretty much all of them. I first noticed this when using our own map applications, similar to Google maps.I first blamed it on our developers - until I noticed the same issue with Google Maps.

But the issue also happens with tools such as MS Powerpoint or MS Word and even Excel. In all case, a small touch on the mouse triggers a massive scroll. That happens to me all the time with Powerpoint and Word: I am typing some text, then I want to move the mouse to a place some lines above or below - and suddenly the document scrolls wildly to some place far away in the document. I then waste time moving back to the slide I was working on. Not good for my productivity. On Excel, scrolling precisely to the line you want to see or modify is very hard. Scrolling just one line up or down is just not possible at all.

Interestingly, Apple-made tools seem not to suffer from that: Preview scrolls smoothly and precisely. So do iTunes, App Store, Messages or Mail. I have not tried Pages, Numbers or Keynote, but I am curious about the feedback. In those tools a small movement with your finger on the mouse translates to a short scroll. A longer movement translates to a longer scroll. But in MS Word, even a short movement translates to a scroll of half a page or more.

This demonstrates that the issue is NOT with the magic mouse or trackpad proper, but rather with the applications that handle mouse/trackpad scrolling events. When I move my finger slowly and just a tiny little bit on the mouse, the form I am typing this in (using Chrome) scrolls just a tiny little bit at the same speed - clearly proportional to the movement of my finger. If I do the same tiny movement in a Google or Bing maps application, it zooms in or out wildly - not just one zoom level as I would expect.

Of course, the major difference between the magic mouse (or trackpad) compared to a regular mouse wheel is the absence of any feedback: the mouse wheel clicks when you scroll. Typically one "click" means zooming in exactly one level in map applications (or advance one slide in Powerpoint). The magic mouse has nothing like that.

The bottom line: the magic mouse (or the trackpad) is useless when scrolling in most non-Apple applications: Web Maps (not just Google, also Bing, Yahoo, Here, ... ) as well as productivity tools (MS Office). I can't imagine that this is all part of a devious plan of Apple to get us to use their own mapping app (yechh!) or their own productivity suite :-)

But does Apple listen to our complaints ? Does it do anything about the bug reports we file - besides closing them as "not a bug" ? No it does not. We are just customers and we are obviously wrong: too stupid to use whatever technology Apple makes (but not so stupid as not to buy it). I know that ******** and moaning in these forums makes no difference, but it is the only place I can express my dissatisfaction.

I am now back to using a "regular" mouse with a real wheel. Works fine in all environments. Thanks, Magic Mouse and good bye.

agodfrin,

Can't blame you for being annoyed enough to write that post. Mine is scrolling and also clicking, highlighting, all on it's own ( magic track pad ). All on apple apps and programs as well as on anything. Definitely Maverick OS problem. I can take trackpad to laptop pro still on mountain lion and it works perfectly as always!! Back to desktop on Mavericks and it is possessed!!

What I don't understand!!! They sell new desktops with magic track pad or mouse and they apparently must work on new machines with coming with Maverick installed? So what is the difference in having upgraded from Mountain Lion? Has anyone done a clean install of Maverick and then used magic mouse or Pad? Perhaps some conflict left over from upgrade?

George in NY

George,

I have not had such a bad experience like the one you describe ("Mine is scrolling and also clicking, highlighting, all on it's own"). My mouse works fine most of the time, and so does my trackpad (I am using the built-in trackpad on a MacBook Pro). Your problem is clearly more serious ...

In my case, I have done an upgrade from Mountain Lion, and applied all successive Mavericks updates (I am now at 10.9.3).

I guess I could try doing a clean install of Mavericks to see what happens. But that takes time and I have better things to do ... :-)

Albert

I'm pretty sure mine is a fresh install of Mavericks as I upgraded to an SSD drive and installed directly onto that, rather than upgrade - though there is a possibility I briefly installed ML then upgraded. Either way I have the issue and only my MagicPrefs workaround has helped sedate the issue for me.

HI I to have the same problem and it is even less controllable with Bootcamp / Win 7. I am using ARC GIS and trying to position the cursor on the map is most trying, sometimes I would be more succesful blind-folded with a bow and arrow. Has any one got experience of the good old fashioned wire attached mouse or another manufacturers bluetooth mouse ? I hav'nt got time to mess around chasing Apple, Steve Jobs is sorely missed, what happened to engineering excellence and customer service?

Crag_rat wrote:

HI I to have the same problem and it is even less controllable with Bootcamp / Win 7. I am using ARC GIS and trying to position the cursor on the map is most trying, sometimes I would be more succesful blind-folded with a bow and arrow. Has any one got experience of the good old fashioned wire attached mouse or another manufacturers bluetooth mouse ? I hav'nt got time to mess around chasing Apple, Steve Jobs is sorely missed, what happened to engineering excellence and customer service?

I went back to old standard Logitech optical mouse which operates perfectly!

George in NY

Hi George, thats the wire connected Logitec ?