Tue, 27 Oct 2009 Apple Magic Mouse review

Based on pure aesthetics, Apple’s new Magic Mouse is a crowning achievement for the company's design team. Sophisticated, alluring, and downright stunning, the Magic Mouse epitomizes Apple style. Getting down to the nitty-gritty—actually using the mouse to get stuff done—I found that the Magic Mouse and its Multi-Touch features work well. But it may not be incentive enough to abandon your current mouse.

Design

The top surface of the Magic Mouse has a nice, smooth feel, while the aluminum along the sides has enough texture for gripping. Like the Apple Mouse the new name for the Mighty Mouse the Magic Mouse has no visible buttons; it also does not have a scrollball.

The Magic Mouse has a very low profile, the lowest of any mouse I’ve used. It measures 4.50 inches long and 2.13 inches wide, rising 0.93 inches off the table. If you like having the lower part of a mouse resting against your palm, the Magic Mouse may be too low. Generally, I don’t need to have the mouse against the palm of my hand, but if this is your preference, you may have a problem with this mouse.

Turn the Magic Mouse over, and you’ll find the battery compartment, which houses two AA batteries. The laser optics are located near the top of the mouse. The power switch is next to the optics. The bottom of the mouse also has two plastic rails upon which the Magic Mouse moves.

Multi-Touch

Multi-Touch technology is used in the iPhone and on the MacBook trackpads; in the Magic Mouse, Multi-Touch acts in place of a scrollball. You can use the whole surface above the Apple logo for finger swipes. You can swipe up, down, left, right, diagonally, or even in a circle, and your onscreen window will move in the respective direction. Scrolling with Multi-Touch is easy and feels natural.

The other helpful Multi-Touch functions are two-finger swiping left or right for going forward or back in iPhoto or Safari, and holding down the Control key on your keyboard and swipe up and down to zoom. I had to practice the two-finger swipes because at first, my touch was too heavy and I would move the whole mouse.

Underneath the Magic Mouse are a pair of plastic rails upon which the mouse sits.

You can’t use Multi-Touch if you run a non-Mac operating system on your Mac, either through a virtualization application like VMware, or via Boot Camp. The Magic Mouse then becomes a basic two-button mouse.

Multi-Touch works smoothly on the Magic Mouse, but it doesn’t feel more advantageous or worse than a scrollball. And because of this, I’m left feeling that Multi-Touch on a mouse has the potential for more. Hopefully, driver updates or third-party applications will include more functions that will demonstrate the input advantages of Multi-Touch on a mouse.

There is a maintenance advantage; the lack of moving parts means you don’t have to worry about a clogged or broken scrollball.

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