Runaway Trackpad in El Capitan

[Shooshie]

El Capitan brought back a problem that was prevalent about 4 OSes ago. Maybe OS X 10.6 or 10.7; I don't remember when it was fixed, but it's back. What happens is that once in a while the cursor starts running away as if it's loosely tethered to your controller. In my case that's a Magic Trackpad, but in previous versions of OS X it happened with trackballs, mice, and any kind of pointing device.

You reach for something, and the cursor overshoots. So you backtrack, and it overshoots again. You have to make microscopic motions to finally get it on the target. Very frustrating if you are working with small objects as in DP.

The cure is to turn off that device within the Bluetooth menu. Then hit the button on the Magic Trackpad (or just click), and in about 2 seconds it's reconnected, and the overshoot problem is gone. It comes back frequently, however, so I finally created a QuicKeys routine to do that menu for me, since it's hard to hit the menu with the overshooting pointer.

The QuicKeys routine oddly takes about 5 seconds to complete, rather than instantly finding the menu, but that's still faster than I can do it with the mouse once that pointer starts overreaching. I hope that Apple with address this (again) in future updates.

I hate problems that recur. Someone fixes a problem, then someone else comes along and breaks it again later on down the line. It's like one refuses to listen to the other, or perhaps someone does a poor job of documenting their code, or who knows what? But many problems find their way back into the code as more updates happen.

Anyway, if you had this problem before, it's back, but there's an easy way to reset it every time it happens, something I never knew to do before.

Shooshie

PS: after thinking about this thread for a couple days, I'm remembering this problem as a chronic one that went as far back as the Classic MacOS days. It used to plague my Kensington trackballs, and even various mice. This very likely isn't a Bluetooth problem; it's just coincidental that resetting a Bluetooth "mouse" causes the Mac to reset the tracking speed. I think this is the same old problem that was in the MacOS for way over a dozen years.

[mikehalloran]

I've never experienced this and I'm using mine 10 hours a day at least. You can set the response in the Preferences but that has been true since, what, System 4?

Is something else paired via Bluetooth that you don't know about?

[HCMarkus]

Shooshie, if it is a Bluetooth issue and your Mac is at some distance from your work area, the remote Bluetooth dongle trick is a great cure. I think Killahurtz found this useful:

http://oliverwolfson.com/apple-mac-pro- ... 0ue-solved

[stratology]

You have found a workaround, but it may be a good idea to identify the root cause of the issue.

One obvious thing to look into would be possible interference from other devices. Here's a list.

[mikehalloran]

You have found a workaround, but it may be a good idea to identify the root cause of the issue.

One obvious thing to look into would be possible interference from other devices. Here's a list.

Yes! I was looking for that list this morning but wasn't using the right search criteria.

[mikehalloran]

Shooshie, if it is a Bluetooth issue and your Mac is at some distances from your work area, the remote Bluetooth dongle trick is a great cure. I think Killahurtz found this useful:

http://oliverwolfson.com/apple-mac-pro- ... 0ue-solved

I couldn't make that link work but this one does:
http://apple.stackexchange.com/question ... controller

If a BT dongle or card turns out to be the best solution, get one that supports BT 4. Many of the closeouts don't.

[Shooshie]

It does seem like that kind of problem, but it was working great for several OS versions, and then with 9.0 it suddenly broke again. I have to believe it's a code thing, not a radio wave thing. That, plus the fact that my trackpad is less than 3 feet from the BT receptor in my Mac.

In any case, I have a couple BT adapters. I'll try it just to be sure.

Shooshie

[mikehalloran]

It turns out that, for many years, many MPs came with the antennae wires connected incorrectly. The best place to start is to see if yours is one of them.

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?s ... 8121030417

OS 10.7 Lion did have major BT problems in that Macs were prone to pairing with nearly anything out there and the user was often unaware. Apple addressed this in 10.8.

[bayswater]

Yes, I had the same problem with earlier versions of OS X/DP. I couldn't use the trackpad with 10.8/8.07, but somewhere, either with DP 9 or OS X 10.10, it started working. Like you I doubt it was a problem with bluetooth because the trackpad worked properly with Logic, DSP-Q, the Finder, Mixbus, etc, just not with DP. In my case it was wild scrolling. A tiny swipe would move the cursor a few hours, or zoom into to sample level, etc.

[HCMarkus]

Her's the proper link to the site I referenced earlier:

http://oliverwolfson.com/apple-mac-pro- ... ue-solved/

[Shooshie]

Yes, I had the same problem with earlier versions of OS X/DP. I couldn't use the trackpad with 10.8/8.07, but somewhere, either with DP 9 or OS X 10.10, it started working. Like you I doubt it was a problem with bluetooth because the trackpad worked properly with Logic, DSP-Q, the Finder, Mixbus, etc, just not with DP. In my case it was wild scrolling. A tiny swipe would move the cursor a few hours, or zoom into to sample level, etc.

That was a DP problem, and after many tech-links, phone calls, and posts here, MOTU finally saw what I was talking about, and fixed it. Especially after I more or less figured out what was causing it. (which I no longer can remember, but it was a good bit of intuitive thinking to figure it out.) And what a mess it was until they fixed it. I sometimes kept a trackball and a mouse on my desk, next to the trackpad, just to handle scrolling. It was just inoperable. But MOTU fixed that a while back, and I've been soooo happy they did.

Then I installed El Capitan, which is overall a good operating system, but it reintroduced this acceleration problem from a few years back. Not a scrolling problem — which seems to be application based — and not limited to the Trackpad (affects all input devices if it's like it used to be) but something like general rampant acceleration. It doesn't matter where you've got the tracking control set; it just starts acting like the tracking slider is set as far to the right as possible. Then, you turn off the device in the BT menu and give the OS a few seconds before clicking it to come back on, which resets it and all is well for a while. You do have to give it a few seconds before turning it back on, so that the OS has time to notice it.

But just to be clear, this is not the DP problem. DP works great with the Trackpad now. This is an OS problem, eradicated years ago, back again in El Cap like a ghost in some horror flick.

By the way, this used to happen even in the Classic MacOS back in the 1990s. It was subtle, so I'm guessing that a lot of people just cursed their mouse and didn't realize there was a code problem in the OS. It happened to me all the time on a Kensington Turbo Mouse. (13 button trackball) I often thought it was fuzz in the works, but I'd clean it out and it would still happen. It took 15 years for Apple to fix it, finally, in OS X, so my expectations are low for seeing a fix anytime soon. You may experience it without realizing it, especially if you've felt the need to turn down the tracking speed on your input device. It's not your setting; it's a bug.

Shooshie

[Shooshie]

i just learned another fix to the problem of the runaway trackpad. Just move it around a little bit. I mean, pick it up, move it, and put it down somewhere else. It's like the Bluetooth signal is bouncing off something and causing a double reception, which the receiver has trouble parsing. Moving it seems to fix that.

Maybe all the rest of this thread is unnecessary. But I still like that you can reset it at the menu.

Shoosh