5 button Mighty Mouse from Apple

[nuabudikae]

http://www.apple.com/mightymouse/http://www.apple.com/mightymouse/

Meet the mouse that reinvented the wheel. The scroll wheel, that is. At $49, Mighty Mouse features the revolutionary Scroll Ball that lets you move anywhere inside a document, without lifting a finger. And with touch-sensitive technology concealed under the seamless top shell, you get the programability of a four-button mouse in a single-button design. Click, roll, squeeze and scroll. This mouse just aced the maze.

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Its Mac and Windows 2k and XP compatible as well. I'm not sure how many DPI the optical sensor is. I'm kinda of partial to the 1600 DPI of my Razor Diamondback.

Also this mouse is white. Yuk. How about it come in black instead Apple?

This kind of dove tails into the conversation a few of us were recently having in regards to the Belkin 3 button USB mouse without the silly scroll wheel.

I'm hoping this mouse from Apple will cause Belkin, Logitech, Razor and others to realize that scroll wheels aren't necessary on mice and often times they are not even wanted.

My .02 anyway.

[joojaa]

Great, looks like a attempt to be different at all cost. The muti button mouse just does not fit the mac paradigm.

Personaly im not so fond of mac mouses. I mean we had a long dicussion about this with about 20 graphics artists (10 programmers and 15 gamers) in Assembly and prettymuch everyone agreed that even the scrollwheel is mostly totaly obsolete, because most used it for pressining.

Suppisingly everyone agreed that the mac one button sleek design mouse absolutely SUCKED. mainly because the click sensor is located at the bottom not top wich caused the mouse to behave differently on press. (and yes we tested 26 mouses 3 of them wich were apples) even the hardcore apple users in the goup prefeered not to use the apple mouse.

So i hope they can do better this time. Thing is that theres plenty of mouses out there with more buttons more scrollwheels and more of stuff. But the 2 button scrollwheel one still is the one thats hard to beat. Except by a 3 button mouse offcourse. (problem is that while all those extra buttons are cool they arent so intuitive to wire for the brain)

So untill someone confirms this is the best possible mouse ever i will asume its a dead end gimic mainly done for the designers joy or creating new stuff.

[nuabudikae]

I haven't been a fan of Apple mice for years. That being said I think this marks a signifigant CHANGE from the Apple of the past. I think we are starting to see a new Apple, one that says "we are listening." Or at least that is my hope.

This mouse having 5 buttons is a huge ordeal for Apple. They are saying you can use one button if you like, but you can also program the other 4 any way you want.

I think this means that Apple is moving from an ego centric point of view, to a user centric view. One that says, "the customer is always right." If this is the case, that coupled with the move to Intel, is HUGE.

my .02

[user_deleted]

Has anyone tested this mouse with Maya and if so how does it perform?

[nuabudikae]

Thats a great question. Since the mouse was just announced yesterday I would guess it will be a few days to a few weeks before folks start putting up reports.

[nuabudikae]

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/mightymouse.ars/3

Conclusion

When all is said and done, all of the the Apple PR on the Mighty Mouse product page is a bit much. As a poster in the Mac Ach succinctly observed, "this thing isn't as revolutionary as one may think. It's just nice to have an Apple mouse with a frickin' scroll button and right click."

To bring us back to the old HCI argument, Mac users are now debating whether Apple should be shipping these with new systems. One-button proponents are very concerned for their users and family members becoming just as confused now while using the Mac as they are on the PC with too many button choices and too many unexpected things happening on the screen.

Multibutton proponents think that, unless Apple packages it with new systems, this whole move is essentially meaningless to the gangs of geeks who are already addicted to very sophisticated multibutton mice, and that Apple is merely attempting to steal business away from companies who already sell multibutton mice independent of computer systems.

Here's my take on that subject: I think Apple should package the Mighty Mouse with new Macs. You would never know, even accidentally, that it wasn't a one-button mouse unless, well, you knew. If you click both buttons at the same time or just press on the mouse shell altogether, it acts as a left-click. If you click on the right side, you get a contextual menu. Only after loading the software and intentionally clicking on the right side does the contextual menu pop up, and that's assuming that you've changed the Mouse preferences from the default setting to allow the right-click button to do something other than left-click. This allows for a great deal of versatility for one mouse

[user_deleted]

I agree, as long as the OS and supported software can take advantage of multi-functional mice then Apple should box it with the keyboard. Get rid of the outdated one button mice once and for all.

[nuabudikae]

Believe it or not, some folks (millions) like just having one mouse button. What is nifty with this mouse is that you can turn off all of the other buttons if you wish or customize them for various tasks.

Obviously this is old news for the rest of the computer world but it is nice to see Apple moving away from their "our way no matter what" philosophy.