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rugonnaeatthat

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 2, 2004
138
0
Adelaide, Australia
I just bought an Apple B/T mouse with my new 20in imac and am a more than a little disappointed by it - it tends to over shoot the mark when pointing. Initially I thought it was me; that I needed to adjust to it's weight etc as it is significantly heavier than the ordinary apple mouse, but my mate (a logitech user) had a go last night and he confirmed the mouse definitely has got a mind of it's own. Is my mouse broken or is this a common complaint?
 

yellow

Moderator emeritus
Oct 21, 2003
16,018
6
Portland, OR
Perhaps your mousepad/surface you're using it on has color variations that cause the laser to not reflect properly, causing the cursor to jump?
 

Veldek

macrumors 68000
Mar 29, 2003
1,789
1
Germany
My Apple BT mouse works very good, much better than the Logitech MX900 I normally use. I'd think it's your mouse.
 

RedTomato

macrumors 601
Mar 4, 2005
4,155
442
.. London ..
Check it's not near any wireless base stations or your mobile phone (or even the microwave when it's cooking food)

All these use BT frequencies and will interfere with your mouse tracking.

I brought an apple BT mouse, and had severe issues with it, so I returned it to the apple shop, thinking it was a piece of crap.

Two weeks later, I found out through Macrumours that it was probably my wireless base station, 2 feet away , that was interfering with the mouse.

huh.

Apple should put out an advisory on this issue - it's not mentioned in any of the documentation.

-RedTomato
 

mkrishnan

Moderator emeritus
Jan 9, 2004
29,776
15
Grand Rapids, MI, USA
I have found that the mouse is quite sensitive to being oriented -- that is, if you twist it in the plane of the table -- sometimes this can cause it to act difficult. But if you're getting jittering, then it's probably an interference issue. I've found my wireless mouse to be quite useable compared to other wired mice.

I wasn't clear, from your post, if you have tried a wired mouse with your iMac to make sure that you get what you expect? Besides the kind of adjustment you mentioned, it might be an issue of how OS X accelerates...I found this quite different when I switched.
 

rugonnaeatthat

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 2, 2004
138
0
Adelaide, Australia
Thanks

My phone seems to be a major contributer to the problem - I would never have thought!! I did some tests by selecting a three letter word (starting my mouse pointer from the side of the screen) with my phone on and off. Although far from conclusive, this did seem to have an effect with a little erratic behavior ads I got closer to the word, when the phone was on. This is a problem that was completely unexpected, my house is on a wireless network and there are three blu tooth phones in the household... hmmm I will have to test this all a little further tomorrow by turning off the router etc. Stupid thing is, as soon as I got my imac I leant my old emac mouse to a friend of mine - so I can't use this in any diagnostic.

Thanks heaps for the help thus far guys/girls it is really appreciated and if anyone knows other reasons/possibilities please tell me as I don't feel this is conclusive just yet.
 

mkrishnan

Moderator emeritus
Jan 9, 2004
29,776
15
Grand Rapids, MI, USA
If you're talking about a cordless phone, try changing channels (although you might sadly have to go to a phone on a diff. frequency to get real satisfaction...when I got 802.11, I was glad I still had a 900MHz phone!). I don't have a 2.4GHz cell anymore (I have GSM), but I use 802.11 and BT at the same time without issues. So it can be done.
 
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