Magic Mouse is here! – review

Posted on Nov 5th, 2009 in Apple, Reviews | 1 comment

A few minutes ago my Magic Mouse got delivered! Expected delivery date was November 10th-13th so I’m quite happy that it didn’t took that long. The box was pretty small and I was even more surprised to see the plastic box that held the mouse (see pictures). It’s soo tiny but very well designed!

I opened system pref., clicked BlueTooth and it immediately found my mouse. Then I went to software update to enable the multi-touch gestures. Everything went very smooth.

It’s a pretty, clean, smooth and button-less design. The Magic Mouse looks like just a piece of curved acrylic topped white plastic, and an aluminum bottom. The Magic Mouse left-clicks, right-clicks, and scrolls in 360 degrees. Like the predecessor it replaces, you just click on the left to get a left-click, and click on the right to get a right click. It’s not a different physical button, there are no lines to demarcate where the left is and where the right is. It’s like magic.

But what’s even more magical is the scrolling. There’s no scroll ball. You just touch the surface of the mouse with your finger and move it around to scroll in the corresponding direction. You can move your finger in circles, and the scroll goes around in circles. The whole top of the Magic Mouse has been transformed into a touchpad, so the whole surface is your scroll area. The scrolling now supports “scroll with momentum”, or some people known as kinetic scrolling. It’s like the scrolling you see in iPod Touches and iPhones.

The touchpad surface has allowed Apple to add new features. For now, there is two finger swiping, where left and right swipe gestures can be made to move backward and forward in web pages, photos, etc. I still need to get used to all the touch gestures but I guess it won’t take that long.