Apple’s recently released Magic Mouse, the successor to the popular and critically dividing Mighty Mouse is a great leap forward for the humble aid of Human Computer Interaction. On a trip to the USA recently, I stopped by the Apple Store in Palo Alto to purchase one. A new stock of about 20 were delivered during my 15 minutes in store and I grabbed the last one before I left the store. That’s not the whole story mind, I also bought a 13″ White MacBook UniBody. More about that later.
The Magic Mouse is as Apple touts, the world’s first multi-touch mouse. It’s a slim, anodized aluminum base covered in glossy white Apple-ness hiding two delicate but tactile buttons in a seamless coating. But the real genius of this mouse it the multi-touch.
Mighty Mouse was a real departure in mouse technology, bringing the traditional rollerball from underneath the mouse, to the top providing X-Y-Z scrolling. But the Mighty Mouse was a fly in the ointment of my usability and love of the Mac. The rollerball was tiny, concealed within a glued mouse case and got ferociously dirty and cloggy over time, even with the cleanest of hands.
Magic Mouse however has a touch-sensitive surface. A swipe of the finger as one would do with the iPhone to scroll is all it takes. No ball getting dirty, and a satisfying sense of smooth scrolling thanks to the necessary Apple update. It’s fantastic. It has one multi-touch feature beyond scrolling at present, that is to navigate back and forth on a page or website using a two-finger swipe to the left or right. So far this has proved quite tricky to accomplish, but does indeed work and perhaps needs practice on my part to perfect.
So gone are the cloggy rollerballs and I welcome the new era of sleek touch. Now, where’s that tablet??
diarmy
