Last month I got a Magic Mouse. I would have bought a wired one if I could have because in all my experience with various wireless Apple mice the sensor-to-pointer communication has been poor and always made for rigid mousing.
Thankfully, the Magic Mouse works just as good as any wireless mouse I’ve used. So I’m keeping it, and now I’ve got a Magic Mouse at home. At work I’ve still got a Mighty Mouse, though.
It took about a week to get used to holding the Magic Mouse. It is a lot thinner than the Mighty Mouse, and therefore has to be held differently. Also, it’s constructed so much finer than its predecessor that my Mighty Mouse at work now feels like a cheap, overfed rodent.
But despite being fat, what I still love about my Mighty Mouse is that third button. Clicking on the scroll ball can activate different events. For me it’s Exposé, and it’s incredibly convenient when working a lot with the mouse.
Despite missing this third button, what I love about the Magic Mouse it’s ability to scroll with momentum. Just like on the iPhone, you can flick when scrolling a page, and it won’t come to a dead stop the very instant you stop scrolling but will instead slowly come to a halt.
Scrolling with momentum has quickly become addictive, and it now drives me bonkers to use my laptop trackpad because it doesn’t scroll like the Magic Mouse scrolls.1
- Smart Scroll is a $20 system-wide utility that attempts to mimic Apple’s momentum scrolling feature of the Magic Mouse and iPhone.
However, with Smart Scroll you don’t flick, you “coast”. Which means the window will keep scrolling after you’re done moving your fingers on the trackpad even if you’re fingers are still on the trackpad. Not only does this break the law of physics, it also means you are always “smart scrolling” even when you don’t want to be. ↵