Apple mighty mouse Review:

With its Bluetooth technology, the wireless Apple mighty mouse gives you complete freedom of movement with no cable clutter. Apple Mighty Mouse features the popular Scroll Ball that lets you move anywhere inside a document, without lifting a finger. And its laser tracking technology allows it to work on more surfaces with greater precision.

With a one-button mouse you can still access contextual menus, either by holding down the Control key, or simply clicking and holding. But there’s no doubt a dedicated mouse button is best. Ditto a scroll wheel, for navigating long documents, and the Apple mighty mouse, as the new Apple peripheral is styled, has one of those too.

The Apple mighty mouse works straight out of the box, sort of. Mac OS X 10.4.2’s Keyboard and Mouse control panel already spotting the presence of the scroll wheel and introducing a speed setter control accordingly. But installing the bundled software adds the ability to customise the buttons and, crucially, allowing the ‘right-hand button’ - Apple calls it the “secondary” button - to work.

I say ‘right-hand button’ in quotes because in truth it isn’t. The Apple mighty mouse has a single button as earlier Apple mice did. Inside, a sensor detects where your finger is - they work by detecting changes in the circuits’ capacitance - and on that basis decides whether the click should be treated as a left-hand button or a right-hand one. This is fine if you keep your fingers ever poised above the mouse, only touching it when you want to click. But if, like me, you rest both fingers on the mouse’s surface, it can’t work out which kind of click you want and defaults to left.

The Apple mighty mouse is comfortable enough to use, particularly if you’re used to Apple’s rounded-rectangle design. If you’ve become accustomed to something more contoured - my Logitech notebook mouse is distinctly fatter at one end that the other, for example - it feels unusual.

There’s a third button positioned on the left-hand side of the mouse where your thumb rests, and an identical one on the other side, similarly positioned for left-handed users. Apple talks about the Apple mighty mouse’s ’squeezability’, but it’s a simple thumb-switch. It could have allowed you to customise both of these buttons, but it assumes you’ll be using just one, with your thumb, though it’s perfectly possible to operate both.

If your PC runs Panther (the previous edition of Mac OS X) or Windows 2000 or XP, setup is simple: plug the Apple mighty mouse into a USB port and commence mousing. You’ll be able to make only minor changes to the buttons’ functions via the operating system’s control panel. If you’re running Tiger, you’ll need to load up the included installation software and be running version 10.4.2 of the OS. Once the software is installed, restart your computer. Finally, using the control panel in system preferences, you’ll be able to configure the Apple mighty mouse to your preferences. The left- and right-click, scroll-ball click, and the left and right side buttons (which function together) can each be set to open any application from Dashboard to Spotlight and beyond. You can also shut the buttons off, enable or disable horizontal and vertical scrolling, and adjusting tracking, scrolling, and double-click speeds.

The Apple mighty mouse has the same smooth, shiny, white-plastic finish you’ve seen on iPods and other Apple products, making it an aesthetically perfect accessory for an iBook or an iMac. (Purists, beware: The scroll ball and side buttons are a light gray.) Though attractive, the Apple mighty mouse is less comfortable to use than other mice we’ve tested, such as the Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse, which offers better support for your hand. However, the mouse does get some brownie (or cheese) points for fitting both left- and right-handed users. We became accustomed to its flat feel and grew to prefer its scroll ball to the typical mouse’s scrollwheel. Even though the left and right buttons aren’t distinctly separated, we had no trouble hitting the correct one. The two side buttons need to be pressed very firmly, and they perform the same function whether pressed separately or together; we wish they were each individually configurable.

The Apple mighty mouse worked well on our Panther and Tiger Macs, and even with our Windows XP test system. With a 400dpi optical engine, we experienced no cursor lags or jumps, even when mousing on a metallic surface, which gives many mice trouble. Though all of the buttons worked flawlessly on our Tiger machine and with Microsoft Word and Excel for Mac, we had some problems when we tried it out with Mozilla’s Firefox. We could scroll vertically with success, but when we scrolled horizontally, the browser treated it as page-forward and page-back commands. When we used the Apple mighty mouse with our Windows XP laptop, we could use the scroll ball only to scroll vertically, and the side buttons, which aren’t programmable with Windows, defaulted to back buttons.

Each Apple mighty mouse comes packaged in a square black and white box, which flips open like the cardboard housing of a New York style cheesecake. Compared to the AirPort Express or iPod, the Apple mighty mouse packaging materials are far less enchanting. Inside the box, a warranty pamphlet, software CD and user guide lay loosely atop the Apple mighty mouse, which itself is nestled within a grey egg-crate of its own size and shape. No other items are contained inside.

On the outside of the box is a small sticker indicating that the Apple mighty mouse was designed by Apple in California and manufactured in Malaysia. System requirements are also pasted on the box, seemingly in last minute fashion.

The Apple mighty mouse is exactly the same size and shape as the Apple Pro mouse, which we found to be abnormally large by today’s standards. If you’ve been using a smaller or mini mouse, you may find the feel of the Apple mighty mouse uncomfortable at first.

For the most part, the Apple mighty mouse does an awesome job of distinguishing between single, left and right mouse clicks. In fact, we have yet to run into a problem in this department. However, the way Apple positioned the side buttons made it almost impossible for us to trigger them without readjusting the placement of our hand on the mouse. This major inconvenience is a result of the side buttons being placed too far up on the device.

Apple Mighty Mouse User Review:

The wireless “Mighty Mouse” with the scroll button wheel is terrific and worth the “bucks” to acquire it. It has all the features you could want and is easily modified to your specific requirements. The small scroll button has 360 degree control, and once you get use to it (like 2 minutes) you can’t do without it. Being able to turn this unit “off” when not in use, extends the battery time considerably. No matter how proficient you become with pushing the cursor around with your fingers on the keyborard, you can’t beat the “Mighty Mouse”.

By Donald

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