Hands on With a Powerful Rodent

Hello Readers. I wanted to re-introduce myself. I have previously written reviews of Tiger, the Mac Mini, and the iPod Shuffle but I’ve been MIA lately. Well, I am back with my thoughts on Apple’s latest offering.

First of all, a confession. I have a condition called Appleitis. Apple announces something and I immediately do two things. First, go to apple.com and drool for a bit. If I have the money, I’ll call the Apple store in SoHo to see if they have it in stock, if they don’t (as was the case with the Mighty Mouse) I’ll go online and check what the estimated shipping costs will be.

I Got the new Apple Mighty Mouse yesterday in the mail. Let me start with the not so obvious. Mighty Mouse is a one button mouse. in fact if it weren’t for the little tiny Chiclet sized scrolling ball you’d be hard pressed to tell this apart from the standard issue, beautiful-yet-frustratingly-simplistic Apple Pro mouse.

Apple has once again thought way outside the box. Despite sticking to the one click mechanism of the previous apple mouse they added the ability to right click. What allows this “Mighty Miracle” to occur are the sensors underneath the chassis of the mouse that detects which finger is doing the button pushing. This works remarkably well assuming that you’re in the habit of lifting your index finger when you click with your middle finger (otherwise the sensor may get confused). It’s frankly quite ingenious.

Apple has always maintained that a single click mouse and operating system is friendlier for a novice user. The argument held water with the idea that that a right click menu could be accessed by using the control+click option. Well Apple wanted to have it’s cake and eat it too. By default, the mouse preferences are set to treat a right click just as a left click, this way a new user can still have the original one click interface. But who would replace a one button mouse with Apple’s new two button mouse, to use it as a one button mouse?

The same can be said for the scrollball, it’s tiny but it feels pleasant under the finger, with a good amount of tactile feedback. Initially, I worried that it would be like the nubs on IBM notebooks (which I’ve always hated). It gives you the ability to scroll in all directions with great ease (people with large hands may find the ball a little on the small side, and Windows users can not scroll diagonally). You can also click the scroll ball, which clicks the whole chassis, but recognizes that the click came from the ball.

Now for my only Mighty Mouse complaint: the side buttons are not buttons, they are activated by more of a squeezing action rather than a click. This is the least intuitive the designs incorporated into this mouse. It takes a little time to adjust to using these buttons. It works great if you program it for something like dashboard, which you’re only likely to click once. Something like exposé is more difficult since you may want to click once to activate, drag, and then click again.

The bottom line, I love this mouse. It is the slickest looking mouse I’ve seen. It maintains Apple’s beautiful, minimalist aesthetics. I recommend heading over to your local apple store and giving the mouse a try.