Today I purchased the latest controversial mouse by Apple. It seems that no matter what Apple releases in this area, even if it’s genuinely good, has fallen into the curse of being criticized for having: a) and odd shape; b) no right click! c) something that breaks easily.
Apple isn’t a company that’s widely known for following the norms other companies do, and sometimes they do screw up when they try to do something immensely different. I just don’t feel that they screwed up with this device as badly as other people say.
Is the Design good?
It’s an Apple device, you know how they look.
The construction quality is also up to par with their other devices. It is a very solid device.
How comfortable / ergonomic is it?
Pretty much any (normal size) Logitech or Microsoft mouse feels immediately more comfortable/familiar than the Magic Mouse does. That’s because they’re shaped to match the shape of your hand.
Does it make this mouse uncomfortable? If you try to hold it like you would any other mouse, then undoubtedly yes.
If rest your wrist on whatever the mouse is on, and move it with the two fingers that hold the mouse (just like you would with an ordinary mouse) then the level of comfort doesn’t differ a lot.
It is slightly more uncomfortable than your normal Logitech, but it won’t give you immediate Carpal Tunnel like some reviewers say.
After a couple of days using it (I had the opportunity to try it before buying) I have yet to feel any difference on my wrist, maybe that’s because I do something reviewers forget to do which is to hold it properly. I don’t hold it with my hand shaped like a spider with my wrist in the middle of the air. You shouldn’t hold it like that!
This is the wrong way to hold the mouse
This is how I hold it
If you tried to hold and use a knife, in the same way that you do a fork, the knife would immediately feel like a very awkward and uncomfortable tool. That isn’t to say that this mouse cuts it as well as the others (see what I did there?), but it will feel different from any other you’ve ever used.
The biggest weakness of the Magic Mouse in terms of ergonomics, is if you try to use it standing up.
Since some of the functionality requires a steady hand and a nice grip on the device, if you’re standing up, it will much harder for you to use the gestures correctly, specially the two finger swipes.
Unlike Cnet’s reviewers, I have never found myself chasing the Magic Mouse across my desk, however, if you want to laugh a bit, or have the finger sensibility of a hippopotamus, you might enjoy their review a bit more.
Finger Gestures VS Buttons
Do you like the gestures of the iPhone, or the new Macbooks? Could you see yourself solely relying on them for your clicking needs? If your answer is yes, than you’ll probably like the Magic Mouse.
Off context: One of my friends who recently received a Macbook described finger gestures as: “It’s like my fingers are having sex with the computer“.
Buttons are mechanical, and as anything else that’s mechanical, they tend to break. This is specially true for the more fragile buttons like the ones on the side, or sometimes even the middle click (specially in those mouses with side scrolling).
Gestures are sometimes unreliable. Because there’s no physical feedback, or sometimes lack of grip, you may find sometimes that your gesture isn’t recognized by the device. This is extremely annoying during your first hours or days with the device, and this is probably it’s biggest downfall: it has a learning curve.
Every gesture you do with the Magic Mouse that requires swiping your fingers is hard to do at the first tries. You will struggle to find the best position to hold the mouse. Eventually you will find it, and it will become better and more responsible, but usually the first experiences with the device aren’t the best ones.
The number of gestures you can do out of the box is surprisingly low. For a power user the Magic Mouse will feel like an immediate downgrade with the default driver. You can’t use Expose or Show Desktop nor map them to any particular gesture on the device. For me these are the two actions I used the most on my old mouse, therefore a device where I couldn’t use or map them somehow was completely out of question.
Thankfully, someone made a tool that allow us to take full advantage of the Magic Mouse. It’s called Better Touch Tool and it pretty much allows you to map any kind of gesture you can think of on the surface of the mouse.
You can also adjust the sensitivity of most of the gestures to meet your needs.
Personally, I mapped the center area of the mouse to be a middle click, and used Swipe Up/ Swipe Down with two fingers for Expose / Show Desktop, respectively, it works great for me.
The app takes up around 15 megabytes of RAM and needs to always be running. For reference, the Logitech Daemon which you also need to run with some of their devices takes up 5.4 megabytes of RAM on my Mac Mini.
Bottom line regarding Gestures / Buttons is that gestures simply aren’t as reliable, even on the iPhone which is touted as one of the best touch/gesture-based interfaces in the world, you sometimes make mistakes. The same thing will happen with the Magic Mouse.
I still prefer buttons over gestures, specially for gaming, but gestures for the most part work just fine. I have the impression that with time I may add even more gestures to the device and increase it’s usefulness as I get used to it, something I could never do with a normal mouse.
Scrolling
Yes, I know that scrolling is a gesture on the Magic Mouse, but it’s good enough to justify it’s own topic.
Let me just put it short and sweet, whereas in the other areas the Magic Mouse either equals or slightly falls back compared to a normal mouse, it completely dominates any competition when it comes to scrolling.
For me, there is no better mouse for scrolling in the planet than the Magic Mouse. It’s where it’s gesture interface is at it’s most natural state. One finger, moving up and down, or left and right, scrolls any window you have your cursor placed over. It’s incredibly fast, due to it’s acceleration detection, and very fluid thanks to it’s momentum.
If you’ve ever used an iPhone the behavior of the scrolling will immediately feel familiar, it makes all apps scroll in the same exact way with acceleration and deceleration.
It only takes you a few seconds using the Magic Mouse on an app like Photoshop for you to wonder how you survived so long without a scrolling device this good.
If you spend most your day inside Photoshop, and you don’t use a Wacom, the Mighty Mouse’s price is almost justifiable for the side scrolling ability alone, it will save you a lot of time.
Editor Note: It’s surprising that most reviews I saw of this device make little or no reference whatsoever to what I consider this device’s best feature. How convenient…
Portability
How convenient that other reviewers made it no secret that the mouse is not as ergonomic as other devices, because it’s too thin, but forgot to mention that the Magic Mouse is a great portable mouse. Whether or not you find it comfortable is something you have to try and see if you can get used to. But when you have a mouse that is incredibly thin, has an off switch and is wireless, that combination makes the Magic Mouse one of the best portable mouses you can own.
You don’t need to attach any dongles because it’s Bluetooth, and that’s very good when you consider that most Macbooks only have, maybe purposely, two USB ports. You don’t need to untangle any Wires, just flip the switch (or not) and you’re good to go.
I am aware that Logitech’s new mouses have a really small usb dongle they call the Universal Connector which allows you to connect to all of their devices and it’s great if you have both a Wireless Mouse & Keyboard from Logitech. For everyone else: no dongle > one dongle.
Yes, I made one of the flaws a feature, like the running joke that goes around, but this was done because it was ignored in every other review. You can make fun of the fact nonetheless.
Conclusion
It’s not the best mouse in the world.
It’s not magical, just slightly innovative.
It’s early learning curve may be enough to draw some consumers away, however if you give it the benefit of doubt, you may find out that it’s not as bad as the general opinion that goes around. Dare I say you may even begin to like it!