If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll know that I tend not to write reviews, despite many promises to the contrary. It isn’t that I don’t have time for them, but I write quite bad reviews most of the time. For this review, however, I am going to try my very best to make it a good one.
As you can see in the photo above, I’ve gone through three mice in about two years. They haven’t broken, but trying to find one that matches what I’m looking for is a challenge, to say the least. The first was the black Logitech. It isn’t anything special, but when I bought it — no, it wasn’t interesting then either. It’s as featureless as the Photoshopped faces in Flair, though it does have side-scrolling. I abandoned Logitech when we got our iMac – the bundled mouse was the worst I have ever used. Mighty? Hardly. The ergonomics were nice and the lack of visible buttons was clever, but there were two things that just about any Mighty Mouse owner can attest to. Firstly, the buttonless design meant that you had to release all fingers from the surface before attempting a secondary click — if you left your index finger touching, it would register as the primary button. This was quite irritating, but not nearly as annoying as the scroll ball. Apple chose to make this (quite ingenious) feature out of a soft-touch plastic. This felt nice to the finger, but attracted dirt, dust, lint, hair, bugs and other little things, causing the scroll ball to jam, preventing scrolling in one or more directions and generally causing a nuisance. Apple’s solution? Rather than switching to a harder surface for future models, they suggested that users flip the mouse over and rub the ball vigorously on a clean, hard surface. If that isn’t an afterthought, I’m not sure what is. As I said, abysmal.
After getting irritated at the rats’-nest of wires around my desk, I concluded that my next mouse must be wireless. Owing to only having two USB ports, it would also have to be a Bluetooth wireless mouse, not just an infra-red one. And it’s almost as if nobody makes them. Apple made a wireless version of the Mighty Mouse, but I’d rather repeatedly punch myself in the testicles than own one of those. In the end, I settled back on a Logitech, because I don’t learn lessons when things are horrid the first time around. This mouse simply will not stay connected for any considerable length of time. It has a tendency to disconnect in the middle of moving it, and doesn’t stay paired. In addition, the battery life on it was dismal, at best. So you can imagine my relief when, in mid-October, Apple added a few new products to the store.
I was lucky enough to pick up my Magic Mouse on release day. I tinkered with one of the store models for a few minutes and was sold. The design of the mouse perfectly blends older styling (the glossy white top) with the newer Apple aesthetic (aluminum lower with black rails on the bottom). It looks new and innovative, without being vulgar. My only complaint, design-wise, is that Apple chose to use plastic instead of glass for the top surface, making it susceptible to scratching. It’s better than the original iPod nano was, but I’ve only used mine for a little over six months and it has plenty of battle scarring already.
The ergonomics of the Magic Mouse are a different story, in that they polarize people. Depending on the size of your hand, the mouse might be either perfect or uncomfortable. It happens to fit in my hand quite nicely, but your mileage may vary. After using it for six months, it doesn’t feel any less comfortable than any of my previous mice. That said, if you’re interested in the mouse but aren’t sold on the ergonomics, you can stick a ten dollar breast implant lump of silicone on the surface.
Never mind the aesthetics or the ergonomics — what you really want to hear about are the multi-touch features. If you’re used to an iPhone, you’ll be instantly familiar with the feel of it. The use of multi-touch in the Magic Mouse is exclusively limited to momentum scrolling. With one flick, you can travel about a third of the way down chocklock.com, which is great for any long news article, your iTunes or iPhoto libraries, or the evolutionary timeline. That said, having the entire top surface as a scrollable area can be frustrating when working quickly in Adobe’s Creative Suite – it’s easy to accidentally zoom into the document.
However, if you’re used to one of Apple’s multi-touch notebook trackpads, you’ll be disappointed. Only a single multi-touch gesture is available (using two fingers to go back and forward). There is no way to activate pinch-to-zoom, three and four finger swipes, middle click or anything else you might be used to. Happily, there are a variety of third-party software solutions available, including Mouse Wizard ($5). But, and I must emphasize this, these solutions reveal why Apple chose not to add those gestures, for two reasons. The first is that they activate sporadically and unintentionally. It’s very, very easy to rest your hand exactly where the middle click gesture is located, perhaps activating Exposé when you least expect. The other reason, oddly enough, is that the gestures don’t always activate when it is your intent. Pinch to zoom, for instance, requires your fingers to be each within an approximately half-inch-square area, which means that if you miss it, you’ll scroll through the photo instead of zooming. Truth be told, I’m not thoroughly disappointed that these gestures are missing.
There are two other issues I should cover. Firstly, the Bluetooth connection is fab. It has never, ever dropped its connection or pairing (I did post a tweet where I whined that the mouse wasn’t pairing, but it was because my batteries were dead. I’d link that tweet, but Twitter’s search-by-date-range is broken). Battery life is decent, however I’d highly recommend purchasing a pair of rechargeable AA batteries. I’ve found Duracell’s pre-charged NiMH batteries to work well in the mouse, and they’re inexpensive.
Overall, then, the Magic Mouse is a truly fantastic product. There are some flaws, but for me, in my hands with my expectations, it ticks all the right boxes.
NB: The vast majority of this was drafted in December, however I thought it best to review the mouse six months after owning it, for a more balanced view.
