Mighty Mouse

I have to admit I'm a bit of an Apple technology junkie. As soon as Apple updates their homepage with the latest gizmo or Steve Jobs performs his famous mass crowd hypnotism at MacWorld, I'm in the buying mood. So it's should be no surprise when Apple broke their 25+ year old tradition and introduced the new multi-button Mighty Mouse I ended up buying one.



Being a Mac fan I have to admit I've never liked the mice Apple shipped with their systems. My first G3 iMac had the horribly designed "hockey puck" mouse which only a small child could appreciate. It's extremely small size and round shape made it difficult to determine where the up position was. The Apple Pro mouse that came with my PowerMac G5 was much better but I found the optical tracking system wasn't very accurate. For some reason it would magically move the cursor completely off screen and I would have to wiggle my mouse to find it. Also it didn't track very well on my keyboard desk so I had to go back to using a mousepad. After a while I just ended up using my old Microsoft IntelliMouse Optical mouse which had none of the tracking issues and worked well on any surface. Also the larger size fit my hand like a glove.

Once the new Mighty Mouse was introduced I felt it was ready to give Apple another try. I never felt quite right using a Microsoft hardware product with my G5 so ordered it via the Apple Educational Store and a week later I finally received it. After a few weeks of use I came to a few conclusions:

• The optical tracking system is just as bad as the original Pro Mouse. I can live with the mousepad, but the random cursor jumps can get really annoying.



• The cord is short, very short, it's the same size cord that comes with the standard Pro mouse. This isn't a problem if you connect it to your USB Mac keyboard but most PC people would need to buy a longer extension.



• It has the exact same shape as the Pro mouse. If you have a large hand like myself it's not as comfortable as a high end Microsoft or Logitech mouse.



• The "squeeze" buttons on the side are very awkward to press. You have to stop what you're doing and reposition your hands to press the side buttons which is counterproductive.



• Although the center scroll wheel does a good job with true horizontal and vertical tracking, it uses the combination of the two to handle diagonal scrolling so its not very smooth.

All is not bad in Appleland... some of the features are really cool.

• The click wheel has a very nice tactile feel to it and the internal speaker makes some responsive clicking and scrolling sounds.



• The ability to scroll horizontal as well as diagonally is a welcome feature.



• No more context clicking is necessary since the mouse handles right clicking.

Overall I would have to say this is not a must have upgrade, especially if you already own a higher end Microsoft or Logitech mouse. I would wish that Apple include this mouse with every shipping Mac though since context clicking is built into OS X and many applications. Perhaps with a larger mouse size, better button positioning, a more accurate optical tracking engine this could be a replacement for my Microsoft mouse. For now I'm going to keep the Mighty Mouse for a few more weeks to see if I get used to it, and protect my investment for at least a little while longer.