brian hefele's untidy space

Apple's newest mouse - the Magic Mouse - is easily my favorite mouse, and I've owned my fair share of pointing devices (from a KoalaPad to Sun's MSC mice). Apple mice have always had quirks, and Magic Mouse is no different, but unless serious hardware flaws crop up, the benefits clearly outweigh the costs.

The original quirk of the Apple Mouse was its single mouse button. Apple always offered the argument that multiple buttons were unintuitive, functions undiscoverable… A point that seems moot with some of their recent UI decisions. The most disastrously unusable Apple mouse had to be the 'hockey puck,' which was perfectly circular, and therefore took far too much effort to orient. It was also horribly uncomfortable. Fast forward to the Mighty Mouse, which finally supported multiple 'buttons' via touch sensors detecting where a user was clicking (there was still only one physical button). Some found the touch detection to be flawed, but the two I owned and the multitude I used at school always registered just fine. Unfortunately, the scroll ball gunked up quickly and was impossible to remove without some serious warranty-voiding action - the quirk that frustrated me daily.

But, now we have Magic Mouse! First, the quirks:

• No middle click. Makes opening links in new tabs a two handed or click-and-drag sort of affair. Biggest quirk, in my opinion. Hopefully we'll see an update someday that solves this issue.
• Without momentum turned on, scrolling is slow, even at the fastest setting.
• Momentum itself is a little bit quirky.
• Lack of customizability, gestures of touchpad.
• Lack of 'touchpad' features.
• Requires two batteries - not so much a quirk, but a slight step backward from the Mighty Mouse which could run on one or two batteries.

I also find that Magic Mouse is too light compared to Mighty Mouse, but that's hard to identify as a quirk when it's just a personal preference rather than an option that could benefit all. Additional customizability/touchpad features are something that I doubt I would use often, but still feel strangely absent. For instance, why do I have to click rather than simply tapping? Why can't the only 'gesture' supported other than scroll be assigned to something other than back/forward? Also, while on the topic of that gesture - it's rather useless. I've tried it in Finder/Safari, and it has trouble guessing whether you want to scroll left or go back. It's taken me quite a few swipes to make it work, wasting more time than I would have even by going all the way up to the menu bar to click back. Much like the squeeze buttons on the Mighty Mouse, the two-finger swipe is tedious and not worth the effort.

All that said, Magic Mouse is still my favorite mouse, ever. The momentum scrolling took about a day (and a fingernail trimming) to get used to. At times I still overshoot, but I think that's my error rather than sporadic behavior on the mouse/driver's part. The Magic Mouse seems to track faster than Mighty Mouse ever did, which is great - Mighty Mouse was far too slow, and hacks were necessary to make it perform like a normal mouse. Even though Magic Mouse is a tad light, it feels great in the hand. Every once in a while I "can't find" the scroll-ball from my Mighty Mouse and panic briefly, but I'm adjusting quickly and loving the overall experience. If they can find a way to get a middle 'button' in there, I'd be in mousing heaven.