[Speakers] Apple PowerBook WAS: Shorts

[Bruce Smith]

> > so, switching the builtin trackpad interface from PS2 to USB, and there
> > is a bug in the Linux kernel code that prevents it from working.
> 
> It was ADB before, along with the keyboard. I was unaware that they 
> went to USB. Probably to get rid of unnecessary ADB hardware. Aren't 
> there USB-based trackpads in PCs? or are they still all PS2? A while 
> ago I was reading up on the touchpads in Apple laptops, and they are 
> manufactured by the same company (the name escapes me right now...) 
> that makes most or all of the PC laptop touchpads, so making drivers 
> for them *should* be pretty simple...

USB keyboards and mice work fine on PC's, and _external_ USB keyboard
and mice work fine on my new powerbook.

They did something weird on the internal USB key/mouse.  dmesg detects
the USB keyboard fine, then it sees the trackpad but gives an error that
it can't allocate it, or something like that.  One message I found on
google said that both the keyboard and mouse has the same USB address,
and only some minor thing was different, which confuses the kernel.

> > Speaking of scrolling (with the trackpad or a wheel mouse) in OS X,
> > any idea why the scrolling is really difficult to control in 
> > Thunderbird
> > and Firefox (jumps around, scroll way too fast), but works fine in
> > native OS X applications?  Or better yet, any idea how to fix it?  :-)
> > (I've already adjusted down the Scrolling Speed in System Preferences)
> 
> Is this scrolling with the scroll bar, two-finger scrolling on 
> trackpad, or with a mouse's scroll wheel? 

Both the trackpad and external wheel mouse have the same problem.

It's like acceleration is set super high on the scrolling, and just on
Firefox and Thunderbird.  i.e.  An external wheel mouse works OK if I
scroll REALLY SLOW, one click of the wheel, wait, another click ...
If I scroll with any speed, I go from the top of a HUGE web page to the
bottom in a quick spin of the wheel.  Where safari would only take me
down a half-page or so.  VERY annoying!

> I've installed a 
> smooth-scrolling plugin for Firefox called SmoothWheel, and it actually 
> scrolls nicer than Safari does. 

Thanks, I'll try that.  Do Firefox plugins work in Thunderbird?  :-)

> Not quite sure why I haven't switched entirely over to Firefox yet...

Speaking of that, how does one change their default browser in OS X?
If I click on a link in an email, it always starts safari.

> I haven't really used Thunderbird on OS X yet, I use Apple's Mail.app 
> instead. It's handled everything I've needed so far, even though it's 
> got its shortcomings.

I'd use it, except I REALLY don't like the way it handles IMAP.

I've got a ton of mail archived in IMAP folders (on the server), and it
will downloads ALL the emails in the entire folder when I click on the
folder (takes forever and wastes a ton of local disk space).  Where
Thunderbird only downloads the headers for each email, and then only
downloads the actual email when I open one.

> If you've installed iScroll (if your PowerBook is pre-2005) to get 
> two-finger scrolling, it may be jumpy if you're trying to use circular 
> scrolling. I've just disabled it on my machine, as it tends to be quite 
> jumpy on mine in all apps if it's on.

Mine came with two-finger scrolling working, I didn't install anything.

 - BS