Cool Mac Gear

Apple's mouse drivers have always been a bit poky, and the one in OS X is no exception. Some third party mice seem to track faster using the Apple driver that others, but even on the fastest setting, which is one of the first things I select when I'm configuring a Mac OS system, I still find tracking speed slow.

Once again, shareware developers to the rescue. MouseZoom by Ben Hines is a simple preference pane that supercharges your mouse tracking speed. It is not a new mouse driver, just a pref pane.

To use the MouseZoom prefPane, which is a tiny download -- the disk image is only 143k -- just drop it in your Home Folder's ~/Library/PreferencePanes/ folder. Alternatively, you may put it in your /Library/PreferencePanes/ or /Network/Library/PreferencePanes folder if you wish the pane to be available to all users.

When installed, it should show up in your "System Preferences" application at the bottom of the window under "Other". If it does not show up immediately, try logging out and back in. On my Pismo PowerBook running OS 10.2.1 it showed up immediately in the System Preferences window, and I did not have to log out and in again.

Ben Hines says that MouseZoom:
• - Is not a hack. It does the same thing the Apple mouse control panel does - just higher.
• - Is not a kernel extension - or even a driver. It's just a prefpane. No kernel panics.
• - Will not cause problems with your OS.

In Geekspeak, MouseZoom 2.0+ sets the HIDMouseAcceleration and HIDTrackpadAcceleration keys in the IOHIDSystem class using IOHIDSetAccelerationWithKey. This is exactly the method apple's mouse prefpane uses - Ben just lets you set it higher. I'll have to take his word for it.

I had to try the 10 setting, which turns the mouse cursor into a little ballistic projectile. Fun, but after some experimentation, I settled on a value of about 4 for general use, but for some tasks I may crank it up a bit, which is easy to do. Just open the preference pane and drag the slider.

MouseZoom requires OS X 10.1, and as noted, I found it works fine with OS 10.1.2.

Note: MouseZoom does not work with USB Overdrive, use USB Overdrive's settings instead.

MouseZoom is freeware

For more information, visit:
http://homepage.mac.com/bhines/
or
http://homepage.mac.com/bhines/mousezoom.html

Re: OS X speed

From Tom Bender

Hi Charles;

You wrote:

"By the way, I'm using the new Tex-Edit Plus X 4.4b2 beta this morning, and scrolling seems to be significantly livelier than in the v. 4.3 final and previous buids of Tex-Edit Plus X. Some undocumented improvement there?"

Just for your copy--you deserve it.

:-)

Actually, each new version includes lots of little "internal" fixes that hopefully help to increase speed and decrease RAM usage. It's hard to keep track of all of them, so I only document the ones that fix a user-viewable error or provide a noticeable speedup.

And how about those wonderful new iBook/PowerBook prices? Just the thing to speed up one's exploration of Jaguar, wouldn't you agree? I've already adjusted my Christmas wish list...

;-)

Keep up the great work!

Sincerely,
Tom

Hi Tom;

Yup; the new prices are definitely enticing. I wish they had gone for a faster G3 chip in the iBook, but other than that solid upgrades with great value.

Charles

Re: October 2002 ATI Retail Update IS faster!

From Michael Leishman

Hello Charles:

I read about the October 2002 ATI Retail Update an decided to try it on my dual USB iBook - OS X 10.2.1 348 MB RAM.

It is noticeably faster at loading/redrawing web pages and at resizing finder windows and document windows. Scrolling is faster and the genie effect is waaaaaaay faster.

After 4 hour of use I have had no problems whatsoever - a very short test to be sure.

I will report back on Thursday afternoon to let you know if the improvements stick or whether they are just imaginary (you know, you get the car washed and the engine seems to purr, the ride seems softer and quieter and you would swear your using less gas).

I can also confirm that a "clean install" of OS X Jaguar made my iBook faster/more responsive - I had way too many third party hacks when I first did a regular install of Jaguar. So 10 days ago I reformatted and installed a fresh copy of Jaguar and it was slightly faster.

Of special note though, I have two partitions (15 Gig & 5 Gig); I booted from the Jaguar install disk and told it to reformat and install a new copy of OS X - it did so but it did NOT touch my 5 Gig partition! I actually expected it to reformat the whole drive to a single 20 Gig partition as I wanted to start completely fresh. Alas, I stayed with the two partitions (OS 9.2.2 is on the 5 Gig) and it works swimmingly. I use Classic for FileMaker 4.x and, if you can believe it, Claris Home Page (talk about sticking to what you know - yikes.).

Cheers,
Michael

P.S. Tom Bender is a good man.

Hi Michael;

That he is!

I went to the ATI Website Monday evening to check out the October Retail Update. The 10-plus gigabyte download deterred me in the short-term, but I got it down last night.

I'm hoping that the minimum OS 9.2.1 requirement will not cause any problems booting into OS 9.1, which I still use frequently.

Thanks for the report, and I look forward to hearing how well the apparent speed improvement sticks.

Charles

Jaguar And Firmware Upgrades

Dear Mr. Moore,

I'm considering upgrading to Jaguar. However, the required firmware upgrade has me concerned. I don't recall Apple ever requiring a firmware upgrade (since my trusty 2cx, that is still working). What does or could a "firmware" upgrade do to a computer, particularly an iMac & G4? If the upgrade process is not completed for whatever reason, could any hardware and/or software be damaged?

Bob

Hi Bob;

I'm in a bit of a quandary on this firmware upgrade issue myself. I've successfully upgraded to Jaguar without benefit of the firmware upgrade, and the Apple System Profiler or tells me that the firmware I have installed is version 2.712, presumably the original installed at the factory.

According to this Apple Knowledge Base article, I should have installed Firmware update 4.1.8 before installing Jaguar. Upgrade 4.1.8 also works in the Power Mac G4 Cube, and Power Mac G4 models, while Firmware update 4.1.7 is available for iBooks, and iMac computers with slot-loading CD or DVD drives.

Apple states that Firmware Update 4.1.8 includes improvements to Firewire target disk mode, network booting, gigabit networking (on systems with gigabit hardware), and system stability. This update also adds support for additional security options which allow the Open Firmware to be password protected.

According to some anecdotal reports, some users have apparently suffered fried motherboards because they didn't update the firmware before installing Jaguar.

I have downloaded the firmware update, but have not installed it yet. Since Jaguar seems to be working well, my gut inclination is to let sleeping dogs lie. On other hand, my head tells me that it might be smart to install the firmware update.

For someone who has not installed Jaguar yet, my best guess is that it would be wise to take Apple at their word, and make sure the firmware update is installed before going ahead with the system upgrade.

I understand that there can be dire consequences if the firmware upgrade is interrupted during installation (say by a power failure). This is of course not an issue with PowerBooks, which automatically revert to their internal battery.

Charles

OSX slow (on older Macs)

From Lincoln Benedict

Dear Mr. Moore,

I've read your column for a few months now and liked your style, criticizing and praising apple where it needs. But I would like to say a word for apple on the OSX issue.

I myself use 9 on my main computer (G4 450 Sawtooth) but run 10.2 on my 400 Pismo. I'll be the first to admit that OSX is deathly slow and sucks a fresh battery dry in no time, but the new OS is simply a new OS and nothing more. It is bound to take up more processing power than the old one to take advantage of the new machine's processing power.

My school recently purchased 4 new 1.25ghz powermacs for video editing. I've had the chance to use them quite a bit and I am extremely impressed. OSX on these new machines feels like OS9 did on the day I got my brand new G4. These are the machines that OSX is designed to run on, not 2 (almost 3) year old machines. 90% of my PowerBook use is conducted in Microsoft Office and in Explorer, I choose stability and the elegance of the new OS over the raw speed of 9. On my G4 I use 9 because this is my web design/video editing platform. I need the speed that 9 affords.

(I'm not trying to sound snobby) but I think if you got a new 1ghz Powerbook your opinion on OSX would change for the better.

thanks,
Lincoln

Hi Lincoln;

I don't doubt for a moment that it would. ;-) It's about the $$$, alas.

We really don't disagree here. I quite like using OS X when I'm not working under time pressure. When I need speed, I run in OS 9.

Charles

Jaguar on Pismo

From Kim Peacock

Charles,

I am turning to you for help as you've installed Jaguar on your Pismo. I have not been following your Odyssey recently due to internet problems. May I ask if you installed Jaguar on the first 8 gig partition and how big was your drive?

The reason I ask is that, in my latest attempt to install Jaguar, I made 2 partitions on my Pismo's new 40 Gig Travelstar, a 5 gig for 9.2 and 33 Gig for Jaguar.OS 9.2 installed fine and works perfectly(except for my internet access problem which may not be related). When I installed Jaguar, I got to the end of the first disk, then restarted as indicated but then was brought to the beginning of the Installation process again. Nothing about what to do with the second disk.How is it supposed to work?

I tried it again but the installer quit part way(big black screen with unix -type command line message --first time I've seen that behaviour).

I had tried previously to install on a three partition set up ( I wanted both 10.1 and 10.2 on the same Powerbook) and OS 9.2 installed fine. Then on to Jaguar but my Jaguar partition was no longer visible, let alone available.It had been there when I installed OS 9.2

My mystery is that I was able to install 10.0 and 10.1 on top of OS 9.2 ( one partition) on my original 12 Gig Travelstar and it worked fine for months. That's why I have always thought that the 8 gig partition problem did not apply to my machine.So I installed a 40 Gig Travelstar as I read that Jaguar loves disk space for its virtual memory. I also maxed out my RAM to 1 gig.If I have to use the 8 Gig partition, I feel that I've wasted my money.

Any advice would be helpful.

Again, what I need to know is this: What partition set up did you use, and on what size hard drive?

Many thanks

Kim Peacock
Powerbook Pismo G3 500
Firmware updated to 4.1.8
I gig RAM
40 gig Travelstar Hard disk

Hi Kim;

To the best of my knowledge, in PowerBooks supported by OS X, the only one that requires the 8MB OS X boot partition is the WallStreet.

My PowerBook specs out thus:
Powerbook Pismo G3 500
Firmware not updated -- still version 2.712 640 MB RAM
20 GB Toshiba hard drive (Apple OEM)

I have four partitions - - the top three all being 4 MB, while the bottom one is 8 MB. I am now wishing I had made the top (OS X) partition the 8 MB one, but only because 4 MB is not really sufficient room for Jaguar. I had no problems at all with either the original 10.2 installation or the subsequent upgrade to 10.2.1, even though I've now discovered that I was supposed to upgrade the firmware first. However, I didn;t do a clean install -- just upgraded the 10.1.4 installation I already had.

There was some discussion when 10.2 came out about Pismos with RAM upgraded to more than 512 MB causing the installer to malfunction. The suggested workaround was to remove enough RAM to bring the total down to 512 MB or less, install Jaguar, and then reinstall the RAM. I have no idea whether that is your problem or not, but it might be worth trying, since it's not difficult to remove the RAM modie from the top slot.

Let me know how you make out.

Charles

The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here:
http://www.applelinks.com/news/odyssey/

CM

Charles W. Moore

Cool Mac Gear