Apple’s Magic Mouse – A Software Engineer’s Perspective

Over the past month I’ve been trying to make the transition from my old windows environment to an OSX environment.  Part of the transition involved buying a Magic Mouse.  Apple’s Magic Mouse is definitely a very interesting device.  It is a very accurate mouse with the added capability of a gesture enabled touchpad.  While I like it, the negatives are over powering the positives… at least for me.

  • It seems too small, at least for my hand.
  • While you can scroll by using the integrated trackpad, there is no out of the box concept of a middle click.  I don’t use that when coding, but I sure use it alot when browsing the web.  I was able to get it back by installing the 3rd party tool “BetterTouchTool.”
  • The integrated trackpad is over half of the device.  I find that I mistakenly activate it alot.
  • The single action of the device whether right or left clicking is irritating.  Maybe its just the size of the device that makes this seem irritating.

While I think it maybe great for some people, I’m not sure they are great for everyone.  While I am not going to get rid of mine, I am starting to use my old Microsoft Mouse more often again.  About the only thing I miss about the Magic Mouse is the trackpad scrolling.

Posted by Chad Dotson

A small town Computer Scientist / Software Engineer. Chad enjoys writing Python and JavaScript as well as tinkering with his Raspberry Pi and Arduino. When not programming, he enjoys Photography (especially lightning) and Sci-Fi.

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