When mouse movement feels unnatural, the user may subconsciously try to use hand and wrist muscles to compensate. At best, that's uncomfortable. At worst, it can be painful. In my own case, my wrist starts to cramp after only a moment or two. After about 20 minutes, most of my forearm is in extreme pain, and I have to stop using the mouse altogether.

Over time, users with this type of difficulty using the mouse can suffer from the permanent damage known as an RSI (repetitive stress injury). I am one such sufferer. An anonymous user on MacSlash rails about "the RSI-inducing unpredictable madness that is the Mac mouse acceleration curve." And on LifeHacker.com, user "PhotoHobo" complains, "One of my biggest annoyances with OS X is the horrible mouse acceleration. As someone who is constantly battling RSI, I find this intolerable." Web searches find a number of other users voicing similar opinions and having similar difficulties.

After "dealing with it" for so long, I finally decided to see if there was a fix, and lo and behold, it's a known issue. My arm literally aches after using a mouse on a Mac. Or I should say, it used to.

I tried USB Overdrive and SteerMouse - both mentioned in this article. Steermouse seems a bit nicer but is 15-day Trialware. USB Overdrive is nagware/shareware but doesn't support Bluetooth mice yet. I'm not sure which one I'll pay for, but pay for one I shall.