Last Friday I finally broke down and ordered a mouse for the MacBook.
It’s not here yet, as you can see from the package tracking here. I’m still trying to understand why the item had to go to two other states, even though it was already in my state when it first got here from Germany.
The latest tracking from USPS is that it is in Harrisburg…
So the mouse finally arrived on Friday… At first it worked well as a general pointer, but the “swipe” features (for PC users, scroll) did not work. This was the whole purpose of getting the mouse to begin with. A quick call to Apple prompted me to download an OS update that would make the swipe function active, but of course not before they reminded me that phone support for the Macbook has run out. Since I just ordered the mouse, I think they considered this grandfathered in, but this is a typical reaction of companies today – not just Apple. The extra download and restart put the mouse into working order. Now that it is working, it will take some getting used to. The mechanical movement of a typical PC mouse is somehow comforting. The “swipe” technology of the Apple Magic Mouse is a bit different from what I am used to. I have a lot of web stuff to do, so more to come.
Update 12/7/09: I had to scale back the response time on the swipe feature to get it closer to a wheel mouse. This may seem odd, but the problem is that it doesn’t give you any of the incremental movements that you get with a wheel. Mouse wheels on most mice have detents that allow you to gauge the distance you are traveling. With the Magic Mouse, there is no such control. Each swipe can be different depending on the amount of pressure you use.
For web editing it has been pretty good – much better than the touch pad for multiple-command operations. …
