TECHGEEK.com.au

When I first got the Apple Magic Mouse, I tried it for about an hour and put it in the box, thinking it was crap. Waking the next day, I checked out my Twitter and found someone tweeted about a Magic Mouse add on for OS X. I quickly got my Magic Mouse out again and gave it another shot, and with the add on, I was surprised. It made the Magic Mouse experience a hell of a lot better.

The design has a clear shell with a white underside, and it is very light, weighting in at 106 grams (46 grams more than my standard mouse). I thought it looked a bit big, so I compared it with my iPhone; and it is about the same size of it. No joke! Setup is easy, just turn on the mouse at the bottom and pair it up with your Bluetooth-enabled Mac, though you will need another mouse to set it up.

Feature-wise, the product is the same with the Mighty Mouse, and gestures can be swapped in the System Preferences to suit both left and right handed people; but also adds additional features that sets it apart from its predecessor.

It no longer needs a scroll wheel, or the 360-degree Scroll button, as you place one finger on the surface and “brush” it in the direction you want, and it also supports Momentum Scrolling, where the page keeps moving and slowly comes to the stop after scrolling; and you can swipe to the next photo or page on iPhoto or Preview by using two fingers on the surface, with going back using the same gesture, but in the opposite direction. The swiping, however, can be a bit uncomfortable at times. There is no RIGHT CLICK on the mouse, but that function is replaced with the secondary click, using two fingers and tap.

But being small does have its negatives, it can be not very ergonomic, and its battery time may not be as long as other Bluetooth-enabled mouses. I would liked to see a dock for it. Laser tracking also seems to be a problem, and I tested it on a couple of surfaces (and some of the testing surfaces may not be the ones you are going to use, but these are what I had at hand). It does work on wood really well, but not on cork, cloth or a fur blanket. Cardboard was also tested, and it does works – just not in the same way as wood.

The Final Line

The mouse looks nice design-wise, and scrolling does work. Like I mentioned, laser tracking may not work at all surfaces, and it can be a bit too thin. Swiping and the Multi-touch gestures for the mouse do make the mouse set itself apart from the competition, though don’t find a Windows version for this – there isn’t any.