Mighty Mouse Gives Mac Users a Dope Slap; Loves Windows users Long Time?
I suspect that there will be well-reasoned discussion of the Mighty Mouse (Mighty Mouse????) appearing at Apple Matters shortly so if that is what you’re looking for move along. If you want a mindless rant, by all means forge ahead stalwart lad.
As I was ordering a Mighty Mouse (and that is a gawdawful name) this morning* I noticed that the Mighty Mouse (it hurts just typing the name) was Windows compatible. It appeared at the time that the Mighty Mouse (shouldn’t someone be fired over that name?) was fully compatible/programmable with Windows 2000 or XP while only OS 10.4.2 was able to meet the heavy requirements of the Mighty Mouse (What are they pushing through the ducts at Apple Computer?). They’ve since changed the page slightly (I think) so it more accurately reflects the actual state of affairs but it is still disheartening to realize that Panther users can’t enjoy the Mighty Mouse’s (the name hurts to look at) full range of features. Sure I can see leaving out Spotlight and Dashboard support but skipping Exposé and application launching? It just doesn’t seem right.
Anyway grab a Mighty Mouse image from Google and start showing your multi lack of button love.
*I am contractually obligated to buy every new Apple product since I have publishing access at Apple Matters.
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Personally, I think that name Mighty Mouse is an inside joke at Apple. Jobs is whispering to his PR guys, “I really want to see how far I can get these people to defend this stuff I come up with.”
Otherwise, it’s a programmable multi-button mouse. Apple is going to pretend like they invented the idea, and then they’ll charge way too much for it.
Must be Tuesday.
It’s push-marketing Tiger, is all.
You want to check if Tiger supports those extra mouse functions (I can’t, I’m still on Panther) on other multi-button mice? I suspect that may be a 10.4.2 enhancement they slipped in to prepare for this mus muscular.
I think the name “Mighty Mouse” is a clever reference to what the new mouse is all about. Like the cartoon superhero, Might Mouse the computer pointing device looks like an ordinary mouse on the outside, but underneath, it’s a superheroic mouse with lots of capabilities.
But it is a bummer that only Tiger users can take advantage of it, although I believe Windows users cannot take advantage of the Scroll Ball’s panning feature (it acts like a simple scroll wheel instead).
The CNET article confirms it:
http://news.com.com/Apples+mouse+goes+Mighty/2100-1041-5815135.html?part=dht&tag=ntop&tag=nl.e433
“Taking advantage of all of the features of the Mighty Mouse requires the latest version of Mac OS X Tiger, though it will work as a two-button scrolling mouse on older Mac versions, as well as Windows XP and Windows 2000.”
So, Panther users can also use Mighty Mouse, but the Scroll Ball only scrolls and does not pan. Only Tiger users get the panning ability.
Like the cartoon superhero, Might Mouse the computer pointing device looks like an ordinary mouse on the outside, but underneath, it’s a superheroic mouse with lots of capabilities.
Yes, I think we all know who Mighty Mouse is. The problem is that “underneath” it’s a multi-button mouse. The only thing superheroic about it is the price.
Wow, sounds exactly like the Kensington Studio Mouse I’ve had for the past 2 years. Fully compatible with Windows 95-XP, OS 9, and every version of OS X. Also includes pan functions for every OS I’ve tried it with. Every button on there is completely customizeable and changes depending on what program you have active at the moment. Am I missing something or is this Apple pulling an Al Gore? ("We invented this technology!")
I don’t see any relationship between the mighty mouse and the Kensington studio mouse.
Just having a touch-sensitive component doesn’t mean it’s similar to the Mighty Mouse: the Kensington device has a trackpad for the scroller, and it doesn’t work very well and isn’t a 2-d controller like the scroll ball on the Apple mouse.
I’ve been looking for a mouse with a good 2-way controller for some time. The ones out there with tilting scroll wheels are too asymmetrical in the X and Y direction. IBM came up with a mouse with a trackpoint button on it… but the stupid thing only supports up-and-down (HELLO, IBM, DID YOU FORGET WHAT THE POINT OF THE TRACKPOINT WAS?). Unfortunately, the 2-d scrolling on the Apple mouse is one of the features that requires a Tiger upgrade to use.
Ironicaly, a plain old 3-button mouse works VERY WELL as a 2-d scroll mouse. Logitech came up with the ideal solution (though they implemented it badly)… the third button is “grab”. You hold it down and move the mouse and you drag the image around under the window… kind of like Adobe’s PDF viewer does, except this works in all apps.
Why everyone didn’t implement this instead of playing around with a billion variants of the scroll wheel I don’t know… well, I guess I do. Logitech’s implementation was so badly done (it was never really explained, and it left weird graphics all over the screen, and the eventually abandoned it) that nobody ever realised what a basically cool idea it was.
Someone needs to write a Haxie that makes the 3rd or 4th button do this. The Mighty Mouse’s “squeeze” buttons would be ideal for this, because it would actually FEEL like you’re grabbing the document you’re dragging…
I never pointed out the touch sensitive component as a similarity. But since we’re on the topic… Holding down the option key (or doing some other user-defined keystroke) changes the scrolling from up/down to left/right.
I never saw the need for a left/right scrolling function. I always had a monitor that could handle it. And on the off-chance that I needed to it was never too much of a hassle to move to the scroll-bar or even hold a pre-defined button (i.e. the space bar in Photoshop) to perform a “grab” function without ever having to worry about it being implemented poorly. If I used programs like Studio Max or MAYA more often I could see a bigger market niche, but I’d want those companies to handle the design of their own input devices.
This “hack” you mention would be as simple as going into System Preferences (where the Studio Mouse’s driver pane is) and setting it up. Speaking of the Studio Mouse’s preference pane, it looks exactly like Apple’s (think about which came first?).
It sounds like Apple is trying to cover that area of a potential market where some nay-sayers are still saying that Apple sucks because they only have 1 button on their mice. So they come out with a 5 button mouse to compensate? Can you say overkill? Why Apple feels like they need to create a poorly designed, poorly implemented, 3 year-old idea and call it their own is beyond me. My only hope is that they’re introducing this early so that when the next OS X comes out, the general market will be already used to it to save time in introducing a new feature (don’t you think we’re ready for more 3-D features in our GUIs?).
Apple’s been doing so good with the iMac, Mac Mini, iPod, etc. Why take this giant step backwards with this? Leave the peripherals to the devotees.
How exactly is it poorly designed and implemented? And where have they “called it their own”? Nice troll.
You’re saying your Kensington mouse can change scroll modes if you hold down an option key or some other extra key… but the new Apple mouse doesn’t require that… and you call that poorly implemented? Your debate is full of hypocracy. You accuse Apple of poor implementation, then defend Kensington’s poor implementation.
And the preference panes look similar? What kind of lame arguement is that? Well, your Kensington preference pane looks like my Logitech preference pane. Kensginton must have copied Logitech! (That’s sarcasm, by the way).
All preference panes for mice/trackballs or any extenal device will look similar. There are only so many ways to design a hammer. Since it’s Apple’s User Interface guidelines that Kensington uses for its preference panel, you can’t claim that Apple stole Kensington’s “look and feel”.
What Apple has done is introduce a one-button multi-button mouse. That’s why it’s pretty cool. Out of the box it behaves the way Apple mice always have—no left, or right clicks… just clicks. But advanced users can activate the other button features.
Sure, others have come out with multi-button mice before, but Apple has come out with one that is as simple to use as the original one-button mouse, or can be as complex as the user likes. That’s a really ingenius design.
Trolling? “Hypocracy”? I thought we were having a discussion? Isn’t that what this forum is for? I submit my two cents and someone else submits theirs.
It just seems to me that the only thing “ingenious” (get a spell checker by the way) about the Mighty Mouse is the touch sensitivity (which I’m curious exactly how well it works, sometimes my iPod thinks the inside of my pocket is my thumb for example). Everything else is old news, and Apple’s claim that, “This mouse just aced the maze,” is a little pretentious.
“I never pointed out the touch sensitive component as a similarity.”
Then I don’t see any similarity between the Kensington mouse and the new Apple mouse, and I’m completely at a loss. Help me out here, what’s the feature of the Kensington mouse that this new mouse reminds you of?
“Holding down the option key (or doing some other user-defined keystroke) changes the scrolling from up/down to left/right.”
No, that can’t be it, I’ve always been able to use shift-scroll to do that, on any generic scroll mouse using Apple’s default drivers.
“This “hack” you mention would be as simple as going into System Preferences (where the Studio Mouse’s driver pane is) and setting it up.”
The “haxie” (that is, a plug-in using Unsanities “APE” extension framework) would be one that implemented a Logitech-style “grab” mechanism. Has Kensington implemented that? That would be neat, if I could use it on a mouse I liked… I already gave away my Kensington mouse because it’s too small for comfort and the scroll-pad is too hard to use.
Mac OS X v10.3.9 or 10.4.1 and earlier Assign primary and secondary buttons and activate Exposé. Display Dashboard in Mac OS X v10.4 or 10.4.1.
so people with the latest version of panther will still be able to use it to execute exposé
Blimey! It’s all kicked off and it wasn’t Beeblebrox’s comment that started it.
Somthing that’s worth remembering when considering this mouse is that design and implementation are not about how the thing looks. Aesthetically, the MM looks rather nice. As a piece of industrial design though, it’s crap.
It’s crap because it’s a such an awful compromise. What was the design brief ? “Make a two button mouse, but make sure it looks like a one-button mouse at all costs” ? That’s what it looks like to me.
It’s classic form-over-function, which though it is a standard insult to Apple designs, I don’t believe is usually true. Usually with Apple, we get form and function. That’s why I’m so disappointed with this mouse.
I’ve no problem with making something beautiful. I’ve no problem with something beautiful costing more than something ugly. I do have a problem with something beautiful costing more and not working as well.
I know of one person already who has returned his MM because, basically, it sucked.
The software to configure it isn’t flexible enough. This might well change of course.
In two button mode, a right click is not reliable, requiring a pointless adaptation on the part of the user to accomodate the design.
There’s no way to remove the ball and clean it (and the rollers). (That probably would have spoiled the awsthetic).
I’m absolutely not trolling. I drank the kool-aid too, but Apple dropped the ball with this thing. It’s terrible. They’re not doing too well on input devices. The current keyboard is probably fine in a clean room, but not only is it a dust-tray, but it has transparent sides to show off just how much crap collects under the keys too.
I haven’t liked any of Apple mice or keyboards, even ignoring the button thing, since they quit making them in Beige. The hockey-puck mice were horrible, but at least you could pick them up and move them without having to practice holding on to those little immobile patches (and now they’ve made those patches into buttons), and all the post-beige keyboards have been really loose and sloppy.
I’m still using my years-old grotty-looking Microsoft optical mouse and a surplus Dell keyboard I picked up at the “garage sale” room at a local reseller.
wow this stired up the beehive O.o
an actual review of it is posted here: http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2488
needless to say, not too promising.
I’ve still haven’t seen anyone beat Microsoft or Logitech at the multibutton mouse. Although many people swear by logitech’s, I still perfer the feel and location of the microsoft buttons. Both are still too bulky for me to use with my laptop, but at my desktop, they’re great