Immediately after installing Lion I encountered the problem and have been researching it since. I thought I had fixed the problem by turning off pointer acceleration, but unfortunately that just reduced the symptoms.
My experience:
I first noticed that my mouse pointer will jump around the screen while moving it. That is, I would move the mouse a short distance but it does not move (seems “frozen”), then appears on the screen having covered a greater distance than it should have (100px move, appears 250px away [arbitrary values]), with no movement animation.
This seems to happen when various components in my system are under some sort load. It reminds me of older PCs and how human interface devices would take a back-seat when the system bus became overloaded.
I have noticed the problem occur during the following system activities:
- Dropbox displaying a growl notification about files being removed from my system (Growl, video, disk?)
- Saving out files in photoshop (video?, disk)
What I know it is not:
1. Solely Disk I/O related. I have run a command like “dd if=/dev/random of=/tmp/largefile bs=1024 count=4000000″ and moved the mouse all around the screen.
2. Solely video-related. I can play games just fine, though the pointer does become noticeably more jumpy.
I expect the problem is related to multiple components.
My current system configuration:
- 21″ iMac (Mid-2010)
- 8GB ram
- Additional 20″ monitor (mini-to-dvi adapter)
- Logitech MX518 mouse
- Apple USB keyboard
11 Comments
Geoff on January 10, 2012 at 6:47 AM.
Happy new year — It’s still happening on my 24-inch Mid 2007 iMac with dual monitors. I have a wired Logitech laser pointer. The problem is not so bad that the pointer will jump all the way to the corner of the screen, as some describe, but the pointer tracking isn’t smooth any more. It’s like the old ball mice when they got dirty. Very annoying.
Mike Walker on November 10, 2011 at 9:47 AM.
Many people have complained of similar issues; please see the full thread at https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3202337
At the suggestion of users in the thread linked above, I have resolved the my “jumpy mouse” issues by unplugging my second monitor and rebooting. Obviously this is a work-around and not a solution, as I now have a blank monitor sitting next to me.
I still believe the issue is one related to mismanaged hardware resources in Lion, because:
1. It worked fine in Snow Leopard.
2. Dual-monitor support was terrible when Lion first launched, who is to say that they’ve resolved all the issues?
3. It affects devices that would use the internal system bus (USB, bluetooth, etc).
I am not intimately familiar with the hardware architecture of Apple machines, but here’s my best guess of what’s technically happening:
Secondary displays (connected via DVI) are running through the “southbridge” of certain machine builds, I believe. If this is the case, the southbridge bandwidth is likely becoming saturated when having to deal with a second monitor being connected. This makes sense as the “hang ups” we experience don’t seem I/O or computationally related; I don’t have my disk activity or network connections drop when I experience the problem.
Since we can now pin-point and work around the problem, what we need to do now is LET APPLE KNOW. I called support but they suggesting using the feedback form located at the link below.
Apple feedback link: http://www.apple.com/feedback/
If everyone on this thread submits feedback we’ll have this issue resolved much faster!!!!
Josh on November 2, 2011 at 7:58 AM.
I occasionally have this too. The only pattern I have noticed is with Chrome and having a multitude of tabs open with one website taking a long time to load. Normally closing the offending tab or restarting the browser cures the problem.
Activity monitor doesn’t show up anything out of the ordinary for what I may be doing at the time either. So that doesn’t give much indication.
I also have dbox, textexpander and various other programs constantly running in the menu bar etc.
Jeff on October 22, 2011 at 3:45 AM.
Same problem…I thought it was my lack of coordination. Mid-2007 24 inch iMac with Apple bluetooth KB and Apple Tragic MackPad.
Mike Walker on September 30, 2011 at 2:49 PM.
No real updates yet guys, but I did want to mention that I had the pleasure of using a Jambox this afternoon! Great little device, but when I hooked it up to my iMac via bluetooth the music would spit and sputter in a similar fashion to how my mouse jumps around. I believe the issues are related. Sigh.
Nick on September 27, 2011 at 12:50 PM.
Mike, I have the same problem. 2011, 17-inch MacBook Pro that I have hooked up to a 21-inch monitor and wired Mac keyboard. I’ve tried a Magic Trackpad, a Magic Mouse, the older Magic Mouse, and the older wired Magic Mouse. ALL jump around from time to time. It’s terrible. Please advise if you find a fix. Thanks.
Simon Duffy on September 22, 2011 at 3:33 AM.
Same here but I have the apple bluetooth mouse with multitouch so hopefully apple will have to do something sooner or later.
It feels like my 8 core mac pro is slower than a 133MHz windows 3.1 machine….
really annoying
Robert Hagström on September 20, 2011 at 3:32 AM.
I have only apple input devices and Im having the same problem. Mostly when the Parallels prl_vm_app is on top of the activity list.
Arne on September 8, 2011 at 4:53 AM.
Hi Mike,
I encountered the exact same problem. If you stumble over a solution, please let me know. I’ll do the same.
Mike Walker on September 9, 2011 at 9:35 PM.
Will do! I fear it’s related to device drivers for certain types of mice. Apple likely won’t do a thing about it, so it’s up to the Vendor. Sigh!
FaceLord on August 22, 2011 at 4:08 PM.
I’m experiencing the exact same issue. I’ve got a 17″ 2010 Macbook Pro w/ Nvidia 330m video card. I’m using a Razor Diamondback 3G USB mouse. I tried disabling cursor acceleration, that only reduced the symptoms. This is really bugging me.