Of Mice and Men

Well, I did it. Thursday afternoon on my way home from work, I bought my new iMac. It was perfect timing for me to consider it to be a birthday present for myself, too. The display is great, it can do things that my old one couldn't, and it has about five to six times the power as well. But do you know what? I think the aspect of it that I've been getting the most enjoyment from is not the computer itself, but the mouse that came with it.

When I bought my original Mac years ago, it came with one of those “no button” mice where there were no right or left mouse buttons, but the entire top surface of the mouse was like one large button. Just press down on the top and that was your mouse click. The effect of a right-click, in the event that you needed one, was simulated in the OS by holding down the Control key on the keyboard as you clicked.

Then Apple released what they called the “Mighty Mouse.” It was similar in style to their old mouse, but had two major differences. First, it could tell which side of the mouse your finger was on as you clicked and it would turn it into a left or right-click as appropriate. Secondly, it had a mini trackball on the top. Many mice had scroll wheels which were great for scrolling up and down, but with this, you could also scroll left and right which was even more great. I think I bought mine within the first week of its availability.

It had one major flaw though. For me, anyway, it had a tendency to get dirty inside under the scroll ball and it wouldn't recognize when I would try to scroll down. I could scroll the other three directions, just not down. Sadly, that was the direction I most often wished to scroll. There was a simple solution, cleaning the ball, but it was a pain having to keep cleaning it almost on a bi-weekly basis so I eventually just gave up and scrolled the “old-school” way, clicking on the scroll bar on the side of the window. I wonder—if anyone had emailed Steve Jobs about this issue, would he have responded, “Just keep your hands clean?”

But now, new Macs ship with Apple's most recent mouse, the “Magic Mouse” (lame name, I know. So was Mighty Mouse, I guess), which they released almost a year ago. It completely does away with the scroll ball, instead making the top surface of the mouse touch sensitive. Want to scroll? just swipe your finger in the desired direction. It doesn't support all the fancy operations that their trackpads do, but scrolling is the main thing, aside from pointing and clicking, that people would want to do with a mouse.

Not only that, but the scrolling also has an effect like was seen on iPhones where a flick of the finger would scroll as if it was a physical object on a slippery surface that you just flicked—meaning it starts scrolling fast, but after your finger stops moving it keeps scrolling a bit, and slows down to a halt (in the mouse preferences they refer to this feature “momentum”). It's fun to watch. I've gone to web pages that I knew were long, not to read the content but to watch it scroll up and down.

But most importantly, since there are no physical moving parts, there is nothing to get gummed up and stop working. I guess the Q-Tips and bottle of rubbing alcohol I have will get a lot less use now.