The Mouse of Magic
I wasn’t an early adopter of the new Apple Magic Mouse. Overall, the Mighty Mouse with its single trackball in its wired and wireless variations has served me well. Though there is a lot of criticism leveled at that peripheral, I was quite comfortable using it and was even adept at left and right clicking at will. I found the shape quite comfortable and something that accentuated the experience of working with a Mac. Since my current black MacBook doesn’t have a multi-touch trackpad, I grabbed a Magic Mouse on a recent flyby of the local Apple store.
The Magic Mouse is sleek and attractive. Boxed in a clear perspex container, it exudes the charm a gadget costing more than ZAR 800 should. There are no unsightly wires and absolutely no button or trackpad to be seen. The smooth, curved surface contains a discreet Apple logo. The mouse is satisfyingly weighty and slides quite nicely on a smooth surface.
Setup on the MacBook running Snow Leopard was extremely simple: unpack the mouse, switch it on (batteries are already installed) and let the Bluetooth stacks communicate.
I was a bit apprehensive about the use of the touch interface on the mouse. Within minutes, I was scrolling easily through documents in Pages and web sites in Firefox. It’s an incredibly intuitive way of working. A brief stop in the Mouse preferences pane to change the function of the secondary button is the usual configuration change I make for every Apple mouse.
Moving the index finger across the length of the mouse enables scrolling top to bottom. Left to right scrolling is achieved by moving the index finger along the width of the mouse. A nice feature is the ability to zoom into the screen by pressing the ctrl key and scrolling upward. A sideways two-finger swipe assists scrolling through iPhoto libraries, for example. When not in use, the mouse powers down to help conserve the batteries – hopefully, these won’t need replacing too often.
The Magic Mouse enables an intuitive interaction with the Mac. I took to it without a minute’s hesitation and already find myself trying to scroll without using the scroll wheel on the G2S‘ Logitech mouse. Most certainly pricey, but an absolute joy to use. I’ll have to think about replacing the iMac‘s mouse next…
Google “MagicPrefs”, it speeds up tracking and allows for 2,3 and even 4 finger interactions.
Great tip. Thanks!
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