Timeline Zoom is Not Stable

he zoom into the timeline is either centered on the play-head or I lose the cursor and it have to scrub to it. For a lot of changes it becomes a real bottleneck. Am I missing a trick?

The ALT + mouse scroll isn’t the same as the - and = keys. It also doesn’t zoom in around the pointer. It isn’t working for me. Any hep would be appreciated. :)

jb