logitech control center sucks.
So, anyone using an advanced Logitech mouse on Mac OS X should have at least heard of the piece of shit that is called Logitech Control Center. It's basically the official Logitech driver/mouse config software for Macs.
Older versions of Logitech Control Center (also known as LCC) used to install and use a hack from Unsanity called Application Enhancer (APE), a third party app that basically modifies apps while they are running to add functionality via plugins. Note that LCC's installer didn't really tell you what you were installing - namely, a third party app that did such a thing - but just installed it because it was using it to provide certain functionality Logitech devs were too fucking retarded to implement without APE. On top of this, the software sucked in general. Yes, you could configure all the shiny buttons on your shiny new Logitech mouse, but the god awful thing used up an insane amount of resources and loved to crash a lot. And then the multitudes of Leopard upgraders found out they had to jump through hoops to get their Leopard-upgraded-from-Tiger-with-old-LCC-and-APE-installed installs working again because APE broke things. Half these people didn't even know they had this software installed, because again, Logitech didn't really tell you they were using APE for their mouse software, which is one of the more illogical things I've ever heard of.
Then came an update that *gasp* didn't need APE. You'd think it's an improvement to not need APE. But guess what. This thing crashes more often than the previous version - and instead of benign application crashes where I just restart the app, it's a fucking kernel panic, and on top of that causes even more issues with other applications - and by other, I mean like half the applications you're likely to use. That is, if it even recognizes your Logitech hardware.
So, obviously having dealt with this pain in the fucking butt on one computer, I kept my old LCC install that uses APE on my main desktop. Occasionally pretty much all my applications will crash as a result of LCC-with-APE-hackery every once in a while (and no, I'm not blaming every crash on LCC, but it doesn't take a genius to read the crashdump), making me want to rip my hair out and scream..but I think losing a bit of work in Safari is nothing compared to the pain that is the latest LCC updates.
Now, Logitech doesn't seem to give much of a shit about this problem. LCC has sucked since the beginning and they really aren't doing much to fix it - I'm not sure the lack of APE in later versions is an improvement given how much worse it's gotten. They seem to be able to hire some awesome folks to work on the hardware, but when will they understand more of the user experience will deal with the software and what it lets the user do, instead of the hardware? Also, that all the user complaints and frustration will stem from this problem. I'm sure the various Logitech support drones I've dealt with were sick of hearing me bitch about the software more than whatever hardware issue I was having at the time.
Until Logitech decides to hire some competent people to come out with good software that actually works and can provide better functionality than the Apple default, here's a few different programs to tide you over that are MUCH, much more well written and designed:
Older versions of Logitech Control Center (also known as LCC) used to install and use a hack from Unsanity called Application Enhancer (APE), a third party app that basically modifies apps while they are running to add functionality via plugins. Note that LCC's installer didn't really tell you what you were installing - namely, a third party app that did such a thing - but just installed it because it was using it to provide certain functionality Logitech devs were too fucking retarded to implement without APE. On top of this, the software sucked in general. Yes, you could configure all the shiny buttons on your shiny new Logitech mouse, but the god awful thing used up an insane amount of resources and loved to crash a lot. And then the multitudes of Leopard upgraders found out they had to jump through hoops to get their Leopard-upgraded-from-Tiger-with-old-LCC-and-APE-installed installs working again because APE broke things. Half these people didn't even know they had this software installed, because again, Logitech didn't really tell you they were using APE for their mouse software, which is one of the more illogical things I've ever heard of.
Then came an update that *gasp* didn't need APE. You'd think it's an improvement to not need APE. But guess what. This thing crashes more often than the previous version - and instead of benign application crashes where I just restart the app, it's a fucking kernel panic, and on top of that causes even more issues with other applications - and by other, I mean like half the applications you're likely to use. That is, if it even recognizes your Logitech hardware.
So, obviously having dealt with this pain in the fucking butt on one computer, I kept my old LCC install that uses APE on my main desktop. Occasionally pretty much all my applications will crash as a result of LCC-with-APE-hackery every once in a while (and no, I'm not blaming every crash on LCC, but it doesn't take a genius to read the crashdump), making me want to rip my hair out and scream..but I think losing a bit of work in Safari is nothing compared to the pain that is the latest LCC updates.
Now, Logitech doesn't seem to give much of a shit about this problem. LCC has sucked since the beginning and they really aren't doing much to fix it - I'm not sure the lack of APE in later versions is an improvement given how much worse it's gotten. They seem to be able to hire some awesome folks to work on the hardware, but when will they understand more of the user experience will deal with the software and what it lets the user do, instead of the hardware? Also, that all the user complaints and frustration will stem from this problem. I'm sure the various Logitech support drones I've dealt with were sick of hearing me bitch about the software more than whatever hardware issue I was having at the time.
Until Logitech decides to hire some competent people to come out with good software that actually works and can provide better functionality than the Apple default, here's a few different programs to tide you over that are MUCH, much more well written and designed: