Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: Windows vs. Mac mouse tracking
Author: Dino Morelli Posted: 4/11/1999; 8:56:04 PM Topic: scriptingNews outline for 3/11/99 Msg #: 4951 (In response to 4025) Prev/Next: 4950 / 4952
This is a really interesting topic in a strange trivia sort of way. :)I definitely felt that Mac mouse tracking was way better until Win95 came around. I don't know the technical details, but it just felt better to me right away than it ever had in Win3.1 or earlier. Possibly something to do with the way the event queues are handled. I know they changed the threading model a LOT when Win32 was developed.
But yeah, makes sense to me that the Mac has always had better mouse tracking. The mouse was a design consideration (I guess in hardware from what I'm reading on here) from Day 1 for Apple. On Intel machines it was a "hacked on" addition.
We've only just in the last few years been able to use a bus-type mouse on all new hardware, as opposed to the serial port mouse that we always had before. Putting the mouse on a serial port is adequate, sure, but lame. My serial ports are a scarce commodity. I need one for my PalmPilot cradle and another for my digital joystick. And cooking up a weird keyboard-and-mouse-only bus interface was lame as well.
Which brings me to... USB. USB is what Apple's ADB should have developed into for all computer hardware, regardless of manufacturer or whatever. We're now seeing all manner of USB devices, including mice. And, of course, the iMac has latched onto USB very strongly. It's a good thing.
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