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Mac Compatible Gaming Mouse

F

floobie

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 28, 2010
75
0
Canada
I recently sold my gaming desktop. Barely touched the thing, because I do most of my gaming on my PS3 these days, and I find Windows 7 rather irritating to do much of anything with beyond gaming. That said, I'm not discarding PC gaming entirely. I'm very much looking forward to Diablo 3, and I do always end up coming back to Starcraft 2 every few months.

On my old gaming desktop, I was using a Razer Imperator mouse. I still have it. It's very comfortable. So, of course, I tried using it on my Macbook. Can't say that has been a successful endeavour. Razer has a driver for it, but it basically doesn't work at all. It will never register or remember the tracking speed, it doesn't allow me to assign anything to the side buttons, or the extra 2 buttons below the scroll wheel, and the tracking feels pretty much awful compared to my Magic Mouse. But, there is an option to turn the glowy blue light on it on and off. Priorities! Half the buttons aren't useable, but I can turn a blue light on and off!

So, what do I want from you? You can do one of two things for me:

1) Anyone have this mouse and managed to get it working on their Mac? What did you do? Help me!

2) Any suggestions for a similar mouse? If (1) doesn't work out for me, I'll just sell the Razer or give it to a friend or something and buy something that actually works. Bluetooth would be preferred, if I'm going to do this.

3) This is just an aside. I noticed that the mouse wheel on another mouse I use is stuck with the natural scrolling in Lion. I like it on the trackpad, and want to keep it. But, for a mouse wheel it's sort of weird. Is there a way to have it enabled on the trackpad, but disabled for whatever mouse I end up using?
 
Look into third party drivers for your razer. USB overdrive and steermouse are good ones. For your scrolling issue, try scroll reverser. I use it with my mouse and magic trackpad.
 
just got a steel series sensei and it works great on OSX, Windows etc as it doesn't really require any drivers due to all the settings being fully adjustable on the mouses little LCD display underneath. got it for £60 shipped from ebay too :D
 
I've got the R.A.T. 7 (Mac-ready) but am still trying to find the best settings for it - in any case, its positive reviews tell that it's probably the best gaming mouse on Earth...
 
Man, those R.A.T mice are insane! I can't decide if I find it hideous or awesome...

I'll give Steermouse a try. Ideally, if I were to pick up something else, I'd want it to have bluetooth. I need to keep my USB ports free for other things. But, finding a full-sized bluetooth gaming-oriented mouse appears to be damn near impossible.

So, better to make what I already have work properly, right?
 
floobie said:
I'll give Steermouse a try. Ideally, if I were to pick up something else, I'd want it to have bluetooth. I need to keep my USB ports free for other things. But, finding a full-sized bluetooth gaming-oriented mouse appears to be damn near impossible.

So, better to make what I already have work properly, right?
Click to expand...
I think that's your best bet. I ended skipping the drivers entirely on the Mac side of things. Bootcamp is another story.
 
I have the Razer Orochi, and it's working perfectly. The buttons are mapped how I want them - the two on the left side are for mission control and showing desktop, and the two on the right for sensitivity adjustments - and I believe I just used the Razer drivers for it. Are you using the latest drivers for your mouse?

The size of the Orochi doesn't bug me at all, it's actually quite comfortable. For a full-sized bluetooth mouse, why not try the Razer Mamba? Another hybrid bluetooth + USB mouse, like the Orochi. I would've got that one, but I kind of wanted more portability, and the Orochi was on sale. :D
 
chrisvee said:
I have the Razer Orochi, and it's working perfectly. The buttons are mapped how I want them - the two on the left side are for mission control and showing desktop, and the two on the right for sensitivity adjustments - and I believe I just used the Razer drivers for it. Are you using the latest drivers for your mouse?

The size of the Orochi doesn't bug me at all, it's actually quite comfortable. For a full-sized bluetooth mouse, why not try the Razer Mamba? Another hybrid bluetooth + USB mouse, like the Orochi. I would've got that one, but I kind of wanted more portability, and the Orochi was on sale. :D
Click to expand...

A friend of mine has an Orochi. Unfortunately, it does feel a bit small to me. The Mamba looks good (albeit expensive). But, is it actually bluetooth? The website doesn't say...
 
Tried Steermouse. Won't detect the damn thing, even though I uninstalled all other mouse drivers on the system. So... time to explore some new options.

Since I don't feel like spending 120 bucks on a mouse just to get wireless functionality, I was looking at the Deathadder. Is the Mac driver for that actually, well... functional?
 
floobie said:
A friend of mine has an Orochi. Unfortunately, it does feel a bit small to me. The Mamba looks good (albeit expensive). But, is it actually bluetooth? The website doesn't say...
Click to expand...
Ah, nope - I'm mistaken. I guess it wasn't bluetooth.. Well that sucks. I'll stick to my Orochi.
 
Razer Naga, is the best mouse I have ever owned by a mile.

Perfect for any game what involves a lot of keys.
 
floobie said:
the tracking feels pretty much awful
Click to expand...

Hey, i've got the razer imperator aswell and i had the same problem as you. It was really annoying especially when playing counter strike. The way to make your tracking smooth is to set your polling rate to 125hz. Do it via the driver you installed on your mac, or like me, when under windows (since the onboard memory will keep the setting).

After this the tracking should be smooth. I think the problem is macs can only run at 125hz, so when you set another polling rate it gets buggy (that would explain why the magic mouse behaves nicely).

I got the fix from this site
http://d43.me/blog/476/mouse-cursor-skipping-jumping-bug-in-mac-os-x/

Only problems i can't solve is changing tracking speed, it seems to stick at a default speed, but the buttons below the wheel will still work in changing the dpi. Also the two side buttons don't work but im not too fussed.

Hope the advice works for you.
 
Avoid the Sensei and the R.A.T. 7

Hey there,

I'm having the same issues ATM, finding a decent mac gaming mouse. I've tried both the Sensei and the R.A.T. 7 and they are both outstanding mice IF you're using a PC. On Mac their crappy or non existant drivers leave most of the functionality unavailable.

The Sensei does have most of the settings available through a LCD display on the bottom of the mouse, this is nice and all, but a little clumsy to use when tweaking settings. However you are not able to use any other polling rate other that 125Hz on the mouse otherwise you get this weird lag where the cursor moves slower than your hand. As you keep moving the lag becomes greater until you can stop moving your hand and then still watch the cursor move around on the screen for a few seconds. Also you can't remap any of the buttons on the mouse without the Steelseries Engine software. Get this, their website says it's supported but when you download and install the software you find out it's only for the Diablo 3 mouse. Plugging the mouse in after installing those drivers caused my mac to kernal panic. Ugly...

Needless to say I returned the mouse.

Then, I got the R.A.T. 7 mouse, again, awesome mouse on PC. I love the customizability and they actually have made some software that does run on Mac and does work fairly well. The only problem, and it's a bit of a big one, is the fact that it runs at the 1000Hz polling rate and you can't change that at all. So I'm having the same lagging cursor problem I had with the Sensei but I'm unable to change the poll rate setting to fix it. I've tried to contact Cyborg support but I have yet to hear back. I even posted a comment on their blog asking (nicely) if they were planning on supporting different polling rates. They deleted the comment unanswered.

I've still got the R.A.T. 7 mouse, but I'm strongly considering retuning it if they don't have any plans for fixing the issue with the polling rate. I think it's possible since I've read that macs to support different polling rates for USB devices, but I thing the 125Hz limit might be in the HID USB drivers. That's just my guess though, I'd be interested in hearing from a mac developer with experience with HID drivers.

Anyway's, if you find a good gaming mouse for Mac, that doesn't have the polling rate issues, let me know :) Good luck on your hunt.
 
Jazwire said:
Razer Naga, is the best mouse I have ever owned by a mile.

Perfect for any game what involves a lot of keys.
Click to expand...

I just got one a few weeks ago. It took a little getting used to, but now it's a godsend for certain games. It's definitely not as comfortable as my logitech g9x, but the buttons make up for the pain.
 
I use the Razer DeathAdder 3500DPI. It's extremely responsive (sitting still on textured surfaces it sometimes tweaks out), really comfortable, and equipped with all the buttons a non-monkey hand could possibly want to use. Not too heavy, not too light, perfect for high-speed clicking' an zooming'. Great mouse, cheap price, minimal fugly lights and ugly form. Great mouse.

E.
 
I just got the Steelseries Sensei Fnatic edition (since I heard it would be Mac compatible, and looks awesome). Great mouse overall, but I was a bit bummed about the lack of drivers / tools to configure the extra buttons, as mentioned above.

I looked around a bit, tried steermouse and usb overdrive, but those didn't detect it, and finally found ControllerMate - a program to remap mouse / keyboard / joystick buttons and program your own actions (make buttons "autofire", and tons of other neat functions for gamers). It identified the mouse and also a "Steelseries Keyboard" on my system (even though I didn't have one). I noticed that the left buttons registered as "MouseButton 4" and "MouseButton 5", but the right ones as "SteelSeries Keyboard PageUp" and "SteelSeries Keyboard PageDown". Anyway, it was easy to hook actions to the button and remap them to keyboard shortcuts, and now I have all buttons on the Sensei working while gaming :) Just tried it with WoW, and all the side buttons are working to trigger actionbar items and such. Couldn't be happier!

Just a tip for anyone looking for a working gaming mouse for Mac. Also, the settings available in the display on the mouse itself are a great way to configure sensitivity and such.

Disclaimer: I'm in no way affiliated with the people producing / selling ControllerMate, just a happy user. The program said it would only work for 20 minutes while unregistered, but I've run it now for 1h+ and it's still remapping my buttons correctly.. I will probably buy it anyway, it's a great program overall, and only $15.

EDIT: Also, to leftCoaster above: I upped the polling rate from 125 to 1000, and I get no lag what so ever. Perfectly smooth :)
 
Last edited:
floobie said:
Tried Steermouse. Won't detect the damn thing, even though I uninstalled all other mouse drivers on the system. So... time to explore some new options.

Since I don't feel like spending 120 bucks on a mouse just to get wireless functionality, I was looking at the Deathadder. Is the Mac driver for that actually, well... functional?
Click to expand...

I have the older version of the Deathadder and the drivers work fine in Lion. I am sure the new version will work just as well.
 
Jazwire said:
Razer Naga, is the best mouse I have ever owned by a mile.

Perfect for any game what involves a lot of keys.
Click to expand...

+1. A great mouse indeed. Awesome for MMOs and anything else that needs a bajillion key binds.

However I'm not sure what to thing of the new Razer Synapse stuff. Having mouse configuration profiles stored in the cloud seems a bit much!
 
I got the Razr Naga Epic a month ago (I usually play MMOs) though I haven't had time for gaming recently. I used it for a few hours only and can tell it's a solid product, but there is a learning curve with it. Funnily enough it's that learning curve that I'm looking forward to when I get gaming again.
 
Don't know why Razer driver doesn't work for you as my friend has 2 Imperators and they work perfectly - just disable the acceleration in the driver and game on.

If you are looking for a different mouse though, I recommend Razer Abyssus - its a simple mouse with no extra buttons and fancy designs, but it works really well. As it is optical it also tracks better than laser mice and it has physical DPI switch on the underside.

It doesn't need mouse drivers (it doesn't have any ^_^), just set the tracking speed in the mouse system preferences to minimal - this gets rid of acceleration and adjust the physical DPI slider to comfortable speed, thats all.

It also supports 125 polling rate, which again can be set by physical switch on the bottom (Mac doesn't work well with anything above 125).

Although I'd prefer if the Abyssus was a bit smaller, its no big deal.

Hope this helps.
 
I use a Logitech G500 with Steermouse, works great although it feels more fluent and accurate in windows perhaps due to OSX cursor acceleration. I think it cost around £35 when I bought it.

I only play SCII and Civ IV in OSX and play everything else in windows but it does good.
 
I use a magic mouse with my Macbook, and I really hate the mouse acceleration. But when I want to play I switch to my Steelseries Kinzu, it feel a lot better because it removes the mouse acceleration on OS X.
 
I sometimes use a Razer DeathAdder, a leftover USB mouse I used on an extra PC gaming box I had. It worked instantly in OSX Lion, right mouse click and scroll wheel work perfectly. Tracking was good and I didn't install any drivers.

I normally use the trackpad, but I installed the Diablo 3 beta on my MBP and you really need a mouse for that game. Especially a mouse that can withstand the million clicks Diablo 3 makes you do. :)
 
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