Magic Mouse - First Impressions
Catherine brought home an Apple Magic Mouse for me to try and I have to say on first impressions I don’t really like it very much.
Firstly it doesn’t feel right in my hand. It just doesn’t feel like I’m holding on to it properly and the hardness of its edges means that to hold it comfortably my thumb is actually under the mouse and dragging slightly across my mouse mat.
Secondly, it’s clearly been designed to track on smooth surfaces. It’s excellent on my desk but I use a fabric pad with a gel wrist rest and it loses it’s glide a little because the rails it slides on aren’t glossy like the Mighty Mouse.
Third, and most importantly it’s slower than a Mighty Mouse (now relegated to being called simply Apple Mouse). Not by much, but for someone that has their tracking speed set to maximum it’s noticeable which combined with the added weight of the Magic Mouse and the reduced glide all conspire to give me this feeling like I’m trying to run through mud.
This is before I’ve tried any of the nifty multitouch features and discovered that unfortunately there’s more let-downs there too. There’s no pinch zoom or rotate (which admittedly makes sense now I use it because you’d never be able to keep it straight), there’s no option for a two finger vertical swipe and the two finger sideways swipe only “navigates” which means allowing you to flip through photos in iPhoto as the video demonstration in the preference panel shows you.
Multi touch is cool, the Magic is undoubtedly cool looking, amazingly well manufactured (You’d hope so for £60) and it’s definitely impressive enough to guarantee it flies off the shelves but unfortunately it feels like Apple have put that above it being a good mouse for people that use them all day - every day.
I love multitouch, I love the trackpad on my MacBook Pro and I was really looking forward to some of the features I’ve grown so used to being available via a mouse when I’m using my machine at home but I’m left feeling a little let down by the Magic Mouse.
I’m going to persevere and use it for a while and see if I grow to like it but I have a feeling I’m not going to.
Damn.
