I have been using - and loving - Apple products since the late 80s, and this is the first Apple product that I truly, actively and loudly HATE!!!
It has such an aesthetically elegant design… no buttons, no scroll wheel, just a smooth surface. What this means is lots of accidental scrolling (both vertical and horizontal) and zooming. I’m looking at a page online, and all of a sudden everything zooms out of sight, merely because my finger happened to barely touch the mouse. Or I’m looking at a weather map and, without warning, I’m zooming in so far I can almost see blades of grass. And don’t even ask about editing entries in iTunes. It’s a nightmare. I guess the solution is to avoid any contact with the sensitive surface by holding my hand in the air when not using the mouse.
And that aesthetically elegant design… This would be great if I just sat there admiring the beauty of my mouse. But its weight and shape don’t conform to my hand, and I’m getting carpal tunnel syndrome from it.
But I love the fact that it’s cordless. Except it periodically needs charging. And where did they put the charging port? On the bottom, so you can’t use it while it’s recharging. Why not put the charging port on the rear end, so it functions like a corded mouse while charging? Did this not even occur to them?
Did they not even test this piece of crap? Did they not have actual people try it and see how it worked? I suppose they can re-market it as the Apple Doorstop.
I like my technology as much as anyone. But more and more I’m finding new stuff is merely providing solutions to problems that don’t exist.
As far as I’m concerned [Logitech’s Wireless Trackball](Logitech’s Wireless Trackball) is the best mouse ever, it’s been around for years, and suffers none of the issues you’ve described.
Oddly enough, I love mine enough that I bought an extra for my office. Well, I don’t like the charging port. That’s a WTF engineering moment. But I only charge mine maybe once a month so the pain is limited.
Yeah, those are really nice. My favorite, and long time standard, is a large Wacom tablet though. My current one is near death though. Time to go shopping I suppose.
Mostly an Apple disliker, so take it with a grain of salt. But I support a dozen Macs at work. Most are about 5 years old and about 1/3 of the Magic Mice are dead. You can get third party inductive chargers so you don’t have to plug it in; all the mice have them. Those also died, so about 3/4 of our mice are dead in some way.
Mice are basically already as good as they can be, and a $10 generic mouse is better than a flashy $70 Apple one.
Apple has failed miserably over the years with many input devices (I don’t think they’ve ever come out with a good mouse). Anyone remember the hockey puck mouse? :smack: Remember the rotting corpse smell of the keyboard of the original MacBook?
And yes, I think they design their mice for 8 year old hands. They give everyone except children carpal tunnel!
Ever sit in a meeting with a few of the new click-clackety MacBook Pro keyboards?
Something you use every day should not be causing you nerve damage. Take out the trash and get a proper ergonomic mouse in whatever shape suits your needs. I like Logitech but Razer and Microsoft both have their fans too (I find Logitech fits my small hands better).
Try this one - it’s got more buttons than you’ll know what to do with and it runs on AA batteries, so you can swap in your own rechargables at your leisure. $40.
I have used the mouse on my mother’s computer a bit and not really had a problem with it – other than that the right-click function confuses her, so I had to turn that off. The ergonomic way to use that mouse is to rest the heel of your hand on your desk and hold the sides with your thumb and ring-finger to move it. That way, your hand is out of the way of the petting surface most of the time, and you get better fine control of movement.
For my own computer, I have a twenty-year-old Kensington 4-button trackball that only needs the shit cleaned out once or twice a year. Mice are suck.
Many yahren ago, I was working for EDS at a major healthcare site doing desktop support. The boss had a half gallon jar of about three quarter inch balls on his desk–Mouse balls. It was explained to me that the client abjectly refused to replace computer mice, and the ones that were in the building were so old, the balls were now a smaller diameter than would work, so he found a supply of castrated mouse balls, and was the local hero.
Amen. I’ve used Apple products pretty much exclusively for over a decade now, and every single Apple mouse I’ve ever tried sucks. I just use a nice simple Logitech M705. $20, nothing fancy, and doesn’t cause me pain like Apple mice have in the past. (The white one with the little tiny ball on it was the worst. But even their regular ones. The shape just doesn’t fit the human hand well. Or at least my human hand.)
Well, fortunately, Apple computers have USB and BT, so you are not forced to use the devices they supply. In fact, the BYODKM principle of the Mini literally forces you to choose whatever you prefer. With notebooks, it can be a bit cumbersome to haul around your own pointing device and keyboard, but their trackpad is really not horrible (though the compact keyboard, with its Fn button in the far corner, tends to suck donkey balls). And the though iPad input system is barely adequate, it too can be enhanced. Somewhat, anyway.
I’m pretty much an Apple Fanboi at this point but I too, hate their mice. I bought a Magic Trackpad a few years ago and love it so much that mice seem quaint. But I also agree with the person who said that Apple fails with many of their input devices. The other one that I really hate is the remote that comes with the Apple TV. Esthetically sparse and pretty, but it’s almost unusable. It’s too slick to hold and use with one hand (I have to hold it with one hand while I use the fingers of the other hand to scroll or use the buttons). The size and slickness also make it very easy to drop down the crevice between the couch cushions. :mad: It’s the one thing that makes me want to slap Steve Jobs.
I like Apple but their mice are the absolute worst pieces of worthless shit on the market. They put all this time and effort into making all of their other stuff work, but when it comes to the mouse their guiding philosophy appears to be “just make it look cool.”
I bought a Logitech M510 on amazon for $20 years ago. It has real buttons and an actual scroll wheel that always works (unlike that horrifically bad mini-trackball on the Mighty Mouse). I put 2 AA batteries in it 3 years ago and it’s still running.
I just wish that Apple would make keyboards that are bigger than Tic-Tacs and had some tiny bit of ergonomic engineering built in. The Macbook Pro from 2010 has a great keyboard and the trackpad positioned between the heel rests means that you never have to move your hands to grab a mouse. Excellent design. So, do they ever make a standalone keyboard with the same features? No. They make a tiny plastic thing for the iMac that makes typing feel like micro-surgery.
No, the mouse is clicky. It has pressure points on the nose that go “click” when you press down, and it differentiates between a click on the left corner vs a click on the right corner (unless you turn off right-click in System Preferences). The entire back of the mouse is a touch surface used for scrolling (including laterally). Current versions of the OS prefer of not give you a scroll bar, just a transient position indicator, and you scroll by petting the mouse.
It is designed to be held on the sides, between thumb and finger, for motion, which can be very ergonomic if you just rest you hand on the desk.
To this day, I still use the old A1048 keyboard at my Mac Pro desktop–or, rather, the wireless/Bluetooth version of it. I don’t like any of the new Mac keyboards. I like my numeric keypad, I like my full layout. I like my real keys.
ETA: Ah, the A1016 is the wireless version of this keyboard.