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Magic Mouse Lag

miniConvert

miniConvert

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Mar 4, 2006
3,264
3
Kent, UK - the 'Garden of England'.
Couldn't find a dedicated thread for this, but if there is one I'm sorry - please point me in that direction.

I have bad lag on my Magic Mouse with 2006 Mac Pro, which seems to fit what users are reporting here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10506086

The cursor often stutters and scrolling is often jumpy. It's the cursor thing that's really bugging me, I can be moving it across the screen and it's as if it keeps bumping into brick walls.

Running Leopard, with the mouse update installed (i.e. multi touch is functional).

Anyone else experiencing this? Anyone got any fixes?
 
yes, i have the same mac pro. had the same problem w/ my wireless mighty mouse. i read before that the metal enclosure of the mac pro hinders a solid bluetooth connection causing this jumpiness. when i received my magic mouse, i was hoping they would have strengthened the signal from the mouse -- but no. after spending 30min on the phone w/ apple customer support, they acknowledged the mac pro / magic mouse issue and agreed to return the mouse w/ out restocking or shipping fees. a bummer because i really like the mouse on our new imac 21.5"...
 
miniConvert said:
I have bad lag on my Magic Mouse with 2006 Mac Pro, which seems to fit what users are reporting here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10506086
Click to expand...
Have you successfully used other bluetooth mice with the MP or is it just the MM?

The original Mac Pros with the optional airport+bluetooth modules are known to have an assembly defect where the wires for those modules were mislabeled and thus attached incorrectly, causing really poor bluetooth reception.

As I just got the Magic Mouse and have never used a bluetooth mouse before I discovered the problem on my machine. The mouse was almost entirely unusable. I followed the advice from this document, mac-pro-bluetooth-howto.pdf (also see this thread 2.66 GHz Mac Pro with major BT mouse lag. Help!), and swtiched the wires and now it works flawlessly with zero lag.

It can vary from machine to machine but on mine it was: 1 and 3 wire on Airport, BT wire on bluetooth, 2 unused. I took 1 and put it on the bluetooth module, put 2 where 1 was, 3 stayed where it was, and BT is now unused.

I've also heard that people have experienced issues from wifi interference but I have a router right next to my MP and no issues with that.
 
miniConvert said:
Hmm ok thanks, I'll try to set aside some time to take a look at this. How irritating!

I guess if I could at least get this fixed then I might be prepared to give it another go.
Click to expand...

lemme know if how this works out for you -- i dont want to have to crack open the tower and mess w/ wires if i dont have to. thanks!
 
I should add I probably wouldn't have bothered if I could have found my DBT-120 bluetooth dongle but alas. If you happen to have one lying around though that should work, provided you don't mind the USB port taken up.
 
Sorry guys, decided not to fiddle with the wires atm - the Magic Mouse is just too impractical for my usage so I'm sticking with the wired Mighty Mouse.

Good luck to anyone else who decides to try and fix this performance glitch.
 
i use a logitech G9 mouse on my PC.

they have no mac drivers.

but i can use it, not to it's max potential.

there is nothing in apple world mouse that matches G9.

not even close.

i tried the magic mouse today, yeah, apple are moving in the right direction, better than previous mouse. but not even close to PC mouse.
 
Same issue here (2009 Mac Pro). I don't think its a Bluetooth issue with the Mac though, because my Wireless Mighty Mouse works perfectly. It is only the Magic Mouse that suffers the occasional input lag and stutter.
 
hopefully they just release a wired version of the magic mouse. it would be nice to have a working scroll instead of the gunked up one on my wired mighty mouse...
 
Works on 2008 MP

I'm using a Magic Mouse that I got for another computer on my 2008 Mac Pro, and it seems to work fine. If it doesn't work on your MP, why not get a USB bluetooth -- that should work. The MM grow on you, though it's a bit heavy and I'm probably going to get some lithium batteries to make it lighter.
 
I too am having the same issues on my Mac Pro 8 core 2009 model. Lag, stutter, even though I have the mouse speed jacked way up using MouseZoom.

It usually is fine, but now and again with heavy CPU usage it will noticeably slow down. And it's very bad after sleep.

I didn't see the same behavior on a wireless Mighty Mouse, but then again I didn't use it much. I used to use a wired MIghty Mouse.

I love the scrolling and gestures on this thing, but if the tracking continues being this bad I am going to have to return it and go back to wired.
 
Hello fellow apple victims,

First of, apple makes realy nice hardware, but I havn't had one apple product that I havent had problems with.

First macbook pro: trackpad and keyboard stopped working (defect topcase), display went black (defect mainboard/graphicscard), defect battery before 50 cycles. Display not waking up after sleep, and lots of soft/firmware issues.

Second macbook: This bluetooth issue

Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter: Lots of noise on my external display, signal blinking on and off or just not getting signal at all.

Mighty Mouse: Rightclick issues

I'm realy frustrated right now!
I've already had to ship my first macbook pro back 3 times and it took minimal 3 weeks before I got it back every time.
So apple just messed my school and job up for more then 2 months and I'v never had any compensation.

BACK TO THE POINT PROBLEM/FIX:
I have this problem with both a Mighty mouse and a Magic mouse, so the mouse being the problem is ruled out.

The problem is often caused by interference between wireless and bluetooth.
Maybe the drivers make this problem occur since bootcamp works fine..

My Mighty Mouse worked fine for 3 years now (exept for the rightclick issues) and suddenly started stuttering. So I tracked back what changes I made to my hardware/software. And It turns out that I resently played with the settings on my wireless router. I found out that changing the channel did the trick, my mouse works fine now :)

I switched mine to channel 7
The problems occurd on channel 12

I hope this helps some other people!
 
I recently came across this issue after months and after spending 20 minutes mucking about with the wifi settings (as discussed) to no avail, I decided to open my MBP clamshell and viola....problem solved. It would appear as if the issue is antenna related....

Move your computer closer to the mouse, and if a laptop, open it up!

Good luck!
 
Last edited:
move closer...

After many months of struggling with this problem, I finally figured it out: It's simply an issue of reception!

On the road, I generally noticed no problems with "jumpiness" of the mouse cursor.

My standard setup at home, though, was to close my MacBook Pro and place it to the left of an external monitor. Being right-handed, this put my Magic Mouse about 3 feet away from the closed case. With this setup, the mouse became practically unusable due to poor response, lag, and jumpiness. It would occasionally get better after changing the batteries, but no matter what mouse pad or alternate surface I used, the problem kept coming back quickly.

After reading this forum, though, I moved my mouse to within a foot of the closed laptop and the problem stopped!

I have switched my laptop stand to be to the right of my external monitor, so now my Magic Mouse is always within a foot (or so) of my MacBook Pro -- problem gone!

It makes sense that reception would drop very quickly as you move away from an antenna enclosed in a metal box, but I would have thought that Apple's engineers might have accounted for this.

So, until they fix the case design, solving this problem is as simple as keeping your mouse as close to the computer as possible!

I hope this helps others too.

Cheers
Peter
 
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