...need to install the new Magic Mouse software, which shows up in System Preferences after you attach it. installing this requires a system restart for some reason.
It requires a reboot because the touch surface plus Bluetooth changes a lot of system frameworks and kernel extensions, most especially IOHID and IOBluetooth. These can't be reloaded without rebooting due to their respective dependency trees.
Good point. I am trying the lower left and right corners as hot points for expose and spaces right now. I'll see if I like that or not. If I don't get used to it, I'll switch back to my old mouse.
Glad to read all the posts you initiated regarding Zoom. I'm also a heavy user of Zoom; it is essential for me. I'm looking forward to the implementation of resolution independence in conjunction with Zoom.
Basically, I use keyboard short-cuts for Zoom. You can go to System Preferences > Universal Access > Zoom > Options to set up defaults as you prefer. Then use ⌥⌘8 to turn Zoom on or off, ⌥⌘= to enlarge and ⌥⌘- to diminish. You can also use ∧⌥⌘8 to toggle between white-on-black and black-on-white.
I probably will get the Magic Mouse and set up the ⌥ key on the keyboard to use in conjunction with the Magic Mouse to implement Zoom. Eventually, it will become a habit and you won't have to think beforehand.
No excessively fancy multitouch gestures or extra buttons
It seems to me that AI has missed the most important drawback: the lack of a recharging dock.
Now we have the lesser of two evils: you either stick with your Mighty Mouse and deal with the sticky nipple, or you have the multi-touch joy of the Magic Mouse but have to deal with failing batteries that need to be recharged and replaced every month or so. If there was a recharging dock and built-in rechargeable battery, you'd solve both inconvenience issues and would have no down time or battery juggling hassle.
So there's no way to assign Exposé to the secondary button?
This is what I might do, since I use Exposé (with scroll-ball-click currently) more often than the right button. Exposé is absolutely essential for us visual types :-)
The two biggest drawbacks I see with this thing is that it has no middle click. I use middle click all the time to open links in new tabs in the background etc.
But a far bigger problem is that you're most likely stuck with Apple's abysmal mouse acceleration. Correct me if I'm wrong. I can't stand it, feels like the cursor is plowing thru mud.
I rarely use zooming but IMO the Ctrl + mouse wheel works great. If OSX had real resolution independence zooming would be mostly unnecessary though...
I'm totally with you on the lack of middle-click even though I tried the mouse in the store and otherwise loved it. I find the absence of this feature a deal-breaker unfortunately. Expose isn't an issue for me as I use hot corners exclusively.
The Magic Mouse is a pretty good overall product, but it could use improvement.
The biggest grip I have is the texture of the touch surface. It's very slick and therefore easily gripped by your fingers -- which is exactly what you don't want in this mouse! You want your fingers to easily slide over the surface so you expend little effort when scrolling.
It's pretty easy to see why they made it so slick: it looks better than a matte surface. (See also shiny screen surfaces.)
The mouse functions well, and I've never been bothered by changing the batteries in my old Mighty Mouse. (about 6-8 times per year is not really a trial. I get about a month of use after my "low battery" indicator would come up.) I expect Magic Mouse to be similar, if not improved.
Unfortunately, the effort of scrolling is a little more than with the Mighty Mouse. I find myself forced to bend my finger much more than I and used to so I can use the tip to scroll on the middle surface area of the mouse. When fully extended, your fingers have enough grip on the mouse to make it annoying to try to scroll.
I wonder if you could do something simple like sand or sandblast the surface to make it more of a matte surface, more like a trackpad...
2AA batteries is not GREEN. I don't know why apple don't use rechargeable battery. Either custom battery or 2AA rechargeable batteries.
2AA => 3V; 2AA rechargeable => 2.4V
sound like there is some technical reason, but I believe it can be solve since apple is a big customer. It is only whether apple want to handle it or not.
++on the zoom feature. Love it and use it all the time. It's nice when you are sitting at an unusual distance away from the screen or trying to show someone across the room something on your screen. Ctrl-wheel is so easy that it becomes second nature after awhile. I do use it a bit less ever since the page zooming in Safari has gotten so good. (I also pine for the resolution independence AND I'd wager on it showing up as a major new feature for the next big cat.)
As far as the Magic Mouse, can't wait to try it out, but do you really have to lift your left finger to click with your middle finger for a right click? I hated that on the mighty mouse. I got the impression from the video that you simply need to slide your middle finger a bit further up for the right click. Seemed to me like that solved the issue. And how is the click action? I personally don't like the squishiness of the previous mice.
It seems like a great general use mouse. The lack of gizmos on the surface is very inviting and there few moveable parts could mean good durability. It's also great for first impressions. If you have wireless internet, you can simply plug in ONE power cable for the iMac and you are set up. No wires besides that. Yes, eventually you have to deal with batteries, etc. but it's a great experience nonetheless.
I doubt I'll ever truly like this mouse for myself, but I'm picky. I need the third button for some things (games, 3D apps) for instance and I prefer a wire, in the end. Anyone who owns a Wii (like an earlier poster) is tired of managing batteries, especially when you are responsible for the recharging.
I do believe that Apple could do something great with rechargeable batteries on their keyboard and mouse, but I bet the tech just isn't up to spec yet for what they'd want to accomplish.
Picked up my Magic Mouse from my local KRCS this afternoon and I must say I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it in the box.
It feels SO natural, and it just felt like i'd been using it for months. It's so easy, so much easier than the Mighty Mouse. I cannot recommend it more!
Yeah, but he's usually the one who's right when the disbelievers are wrong, no? Excuse me, I need to go pick up my seersucker suit from the dry cleaner.
He usually gets the girl also, and a much younger one to boot.
On a more mouse-related topic ... can someone who has one of these already clear up once and for all whether there is a physical click on the thing? Even this article is a bit unclear on that issue.
The reason I ask is that I'm just trying to re-install Windows XP today (I know ... Ack!), but the installer is dumb as a brick so i had to use a very useful Apple trick for forcing the CD out of the drive a couple of times (you hold down the mouse button while booting for those that don't know).
If there is no physical click, isn't this time-tested handy trick going to be defunct? How can one "hold down" a virtual button?
What do you mean lift to click? You mean having to lift your middle finger and then press down? I thought you could just "push" it like you do w/ the left click (you can do that with the left click right??)
The mouse still only has a single button so for it to recognize a right-click, you have to lift the index finger off the mouse completely. For left-click, you don't have to lift the middle finger - with two fingers on the mouse it assumes a left-click.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aaronsullivan
As far as the Magic Mouse, can't wait to try it out, but do you really have to lift your left finger to click with your middle finger for a right click? I hated that on the mighty mouse. I got the impression from the video that you simply need to slide your middle finger a bit further up for the right click. Seemed to me like that solved the issue. And how is the click action? I personally don't like the squishiness of the previous mice.
The click action is nice and responsive but I couldn't activate a right-click without lifting. The finger has to be completely lifted off too - the surface is very sensitive so even the most minute contact with the index finger means it thinks you are doing a left-click.
There's no question the mouse is a lot better than the original but most competing mice I've used are too - the only thing the Magic Mouse mouse offers that's better is the scrolling.
A couple of people here are wondering about the usefulness of middle click. I've had my clickable scroll-wheel set to double-click for years now - I'm amazed more users don't do the same. A single press with the middle finger to perform such a frequent task is so useful I really wouldn't want to use a mouse without that facility now.
1. I have a Santa Rosa MB Pro, so it does support BT easily. I like to keep my menu bar at the top of the desktop as clean as possible, so adding another icon would begin to clutter it. I also don't like to replace batteries a lot. I replace plenty on my WiiMote. I also like wired because it's what I'm used to.
I recently learned that icons in the menu bar can be removed by holding command and clicking on them. You can then drag the offending icon out of the bar much in the same way icons can be removed from the dock. Not that this solves all of your gripes, but it is a nice feature. Don't know which version of the OS this showed up in, but I'm running 10.6.
Another novelty is screen zoom. This requires hitting a modifier key, which is users selectable to be Option, Command, or Control. But how often will you want to zoom into the screen? It's nice you can, and Apple provides a number of options related to this, but apart from showing off or corner cases like zooming into an unresizeable web video to present it full screen, this doesn't seem to be very practical.
I've visited this site daily for several years and this is my first time posting. I have to concur with the others who have pointed out that zooming is NOT a "novelty." The reviewer has mentioned this "novelty" numerous times in articles. I'm 29 with perfect eyesight and I still use the zoom feature constantly. As the reviewer himself noted, web videos are almost always too small (with no full screen options). In addition, the zoom function works great for taking a quick look at small text or a small image and then zooming back out. Thank you for the comprehensive reviews but I think this is one item where you may be out of touch with many Mac users.
Comments
...need to install the new Magic Mouse software, which shows up in System Preferences after you attach it. installing this requires a system restart for some reason.
It requires a reboot because the touch surface plus Bluetooth changes a lot of system frameworks and kernel extensions, most especially IOHID and IOBluetooth. These can't be reloaded without rebooting due to their respective dependency trees.
Good point. I am trying the lower left and right corners as hot points for expose and spaces right now. I'll see if I like that or not. If I don't get used to it, I'll switch back to my old mouse.
Glad to read all the posts you initiated regarding Zoom. I'm also a heavy user of Zoom; it is essential for me. I'm looking forward to the implementation of resolution independence in conjunction with Zoom.
Basically, I use keyboard short-cuts for Zoom. You can go to System Preferences > Universal Access > Zoom > Options to set up defaults as you prefer. Then use ⌥⌘8 to turn Zoom on or off, ⌥⌘= to enlarge and ⌥⌘- to diminish. You can also use ∧⌥⌘8 to toggle between white-on-black and black-on-white.
I probably will get the Magic Mouse and set up the ⌥ key on the keyboard to use in conjunction with the Magic Mouse to implement Zoom. Eventually, it will become a habit and you won't have to think beforehand.
Cons:
No excessively fancy multitouch gestures or extra buttons
It seems to me that AI has missed the most important drawback: the lack of a recharging dock.
Now we have the lesser of two evils: you either stick with your Mighty Mouse and deal with the sticky nipple, or you have the multi-touch joy of the Magic Mouse but have to deal with failing batteries that need to be recharged and replaced every month or so. If there was a recharging dock and built-in rechargeable battery, you'd solve both inconvenience issues and would have no down time or battery juggling hassle.
This is what I might do, since I use Exposé (with scroll-ball-click currently) more often than the right button. Exposé is absolutely essential for us visual types :-)
The two biggest drawbacks I see with this thing is that it has no middle click. I use middle click all the time to open links in new tabs in the background etc.
But a far bigger problem is that you're most likely stuck with Apple's abysmal mouse acceleration. Correct me if I'm wrong. I can't stand it, feels like the cursor is plowing thru mud.
I rarely use zooming but IMO the Ctrl + mouse wheel works great. If OSX had real resolution independence zooming would be mostly unnecessary though...
I'm totally with you on the lack of middle-click even though I tried the mouse in the store and otherwise loved it. I find the absence of this feature a deal-breaker unfortunately. Expose isn't an issue for me as I use hot corners exclusively.
The Magic Mouse is a pretty good overall product, but it could use improvement.
The biggest grip I have is the texture of the touch surface. It's very slick and therefore easily gripped by your fingers -- which is exactly what you don't want in this mouse! You want your fingers to easily slide over the surface so you expend little effort when scrolling.
It's pretty easy to see why they made it so slick: it looks better than a matte surface. (See also shiny screen surfaces.)
The mouse functions well, and I've never been bothered by changing the batteries in my old Mighty Mouse. (about 6-8 times per year is not really a trial. I get about a month of use after my "low battery" indicator would come up.) I expect Magic Mouse to be similar, if not improved.
Unfortunately, the effort of scrolling is a little more than with the Mighty Mouse. I find myself forced to bend my finger much more than I and used to so I can use the tip to scroll on the middle surface area of the mouse. When fully extended, your fingers have enough grip on the mouse to make it annoying to try to scroll.
I wonder if you could do something simple like sand or sandblast the surface to make it more of a matte surface, more like a trackpad...
2AA => 3V; 2AA rechargeable => 2.4V
sound like there is some technical reason, but I believe it can be solve since apple is a big customer. It is only whether apple want to handle it or not.
As far as the Magic Mouse, can't wait to try it out, but do you really have to lift your left finger to click with your middle finger for a right click? I hated that on the mighty mouse. I got the impression from the video that you simply need to slide your middle finger a bit further up for the right click. Seemed to me like that solved the issue. And how is the click action? I personally don't like the squishiness of the previous mice.
It seems like a great general use mouse. The lack of gizmos on the surface is very inviting and there few moveable parts could mean good durability. It's also great for first impressions. If you have wireless internet, you can simply plug in ONE power cable for the iMac and you are set up. No wires besides that. Yes, eventually you have to deal with batteries, etc. but it's a great experience nonetheless.
I doubt I'll ever truly like this mouse for myself, but I'm picky. I need the third button for some things (games, 3D apps) for instance and I prefer a wire, in the end. Anyone who owns a Wii (like an earlier poster) is tired of managing batteries, especially when you are responsible for the recharging.
I do believe that Apple could do something great with rechargeable batteries on their keyboard and mouse, but I bet the tech just isn't up to spec yet for what they'd want to accomplish.
It feels SO natural, and it just felt like i'd been using it for months. It's so easy, so much easier than the Mighty Mouse. I cannot recommend it more!
Yeah, but he's usually the one who's right when the disbelievers are wrong, no? Excuse me, I need to go pick up my seersucker suit from the dry cleaner.
He usually gets the girl also, and a much younger one to boot.
On a more mouse-related topic ... can someone who has one of these already clear up once and for all whether there is a physical click on the thing? Even this article is a bit unclear on that issue.
The reason I ask is that I'm just trying to re-install Windows XP today (I know ... Ack!), but the installer is dumb as a brick so i had to use a very useful Apple trick for forcing the CD out of the drive a couple of times (you hold down the mouse button while booting for those that don't know).
If there is no physical click, isn't this time-tested handy trick going to be defunct? How can one "hold down" a virtual button?
What do you mean lift to click? You mean having to lift your middle finger and then press down? I thought you could just "push" it like you do w/ the left click (you can do that with the left click right??)
The mouse still only has a single button so for it to recognize a right-click, you have to lift the index finger off the mouse completely. For left-click, you don't have to lift the middle finger - with two fingers on the mouse it assumes a left-click.
As far as the Magic Mouse, can't wait to try it out, but do you really have to lift your left finger to click with your middle finger for a right click? I hated that on the mighty mouse. I got the impression from the video that you simply need to slide your middle finger a bit further up for the right click. Seemed to me like that solved the issue. And how is the click action? I personally don't like the squishiness of the previous mice.
The click action is nice and responsive but I couldn't activate a right-click without lifting. The finger has to be completely lifted off too - the surface is very sensitive so even the most minute contact with the index finger means it thinks you are doing a left-click.
There's no question the mouse is a lot better than the original but most competing mice I've used are too - the only thing the Magic Mouse mouse offers that's better is the scrolling.
As a new user to Mac i've just found out about Hot Corners. When you move the mouse to any corner and it shows expose.
It's beautiful . . . *sniff*
Assign Spaces to a hot-corner and experience the magic.
It wasn't rude, but a fair question on your part.
1. I have a Santa Rosa MB Pro, so it does support BT easily. I like to keep my menu bar at the top of the desktop as clean as possible, so adding another icon would begin to clutter it. I also don't like to replace batteries a lot. I replace plenty on my WiiMote. I also like wired because it's what I'm used to.
I recently learned that icons in the menu bar can be removed by holding command and clicking on them. You can then drag the offending icon out of the bar much in the same way icons can be removed from the dock. Not that this solves all of your gripes, but it is a nice feature. Don't know which version of the OS this showed up in, but I'm running 10.6.
Another novelty is screen zoom. This requires hitting a modifier key, which is users selectable to be Option, Command, or Control. But how often will you want to zoom into the screen? It's nice you can, and Apple provides a number of options related to this, but apart from showing off or corner cases like zooming into an unresizeable web video to present it full screen, this doesn't seem to be very practical.
[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]
I've visited this site daily for several years and this is my first time posting. I have to concur with the others who have pointed out that zooming is NOT a "novelty." The reviewer has mentioned this "novelty" numerous times in articles. I'm 29 with perfect eyesight and I still use the zoom feature constantly. As the reviewer himself noted, web videos are almost always too small (with no full screen options). In addition, the zoom function works great for taking a quick look at small text or a small image and then zooming back out. Thank you for the comprehensive reviews but I think this is one item where you may be out of touch with many Mac users.
It's beautiful . . . *sniff*
Assign Spaces to a hot-corner and experience the magic.
Sorry, what is Spaces? I have heard of it but I do not understand. Still VERY new to all things Mac...! Having only made the move a few weeks ago.