I got one of the new "Apple Magic Mouse" bluetooth mice as a Xmas gift this year. I was already in the market for a bluetooth mouse (to save precious USB slots on a laptop) so I thought I'd give it a go. I'm now 5+ months into using it and the verdict is in - Its great, and I can't imagine not having it now.
Some background - I have used most mice to create music and do post - including the 'trackball' style favored by most professionals. Ultimately, I feel that those are the "best" option - and in many ways they are superior for getting around a DAW, but for mobile purposes they don't really work for me. Here is what is working for me and what i'm using it for:
- Right Click - many people don't understand why macs have one mouse button. i've never fully understood it either, but what really surprises me is when people don't know that you can 'right click' by hitting control+click. The magic mouse eliminates this by putting a standard right click function - on the right side of the mouse. Its a little thing, its cool to get it on an actual apple product, as opposed to a pc style logitech or something. Once you start using a rightclick enabled mouse in Ableton Live or Logic your workflow is sped up tremendously.
- 'swiping' the surface - The magic mouse behaves a lot like the new mac trackpads or an iphone - its surface recognizes swipes horizontally and vertically, and these functions can be applied to all kinds of things. For my purposes, however, I use the swiping function to zoom and move my way around the arrange window in Logic. I hold option and swipe vertically to zoom the arrange window vertically, and I hold option+command to swipe vertically and zoom the arrange window horizontally. This is something you can do with any mouse with a roller on it, even the OEM apple mice, but there is something smooth and fluid about doing it via swiping on the magic mouse that I am addicted to. I'm finding it harder and harder to zoom using other methods, i'm such a fan of this one. Additionally, I will swipe left and right to move around a mixer window - or to move around within an arrangement - especially when I'm zoomed in to the sample level and just need to glance over a few bars or seconds later. Again, you can technically do this on an OEM apple mouse - but the first time will probably be the last time. Those little roller balls break after like one solid day of work.
- Instant setup - Although i've not had much luck getting it to work instantly between multiple computers, you can very simply just set it up to work with whatever you need it to. For example, I may work in the morning on my laptop, then go to our studio and sync it with our studio Mac Pro. At the end of the day, I sync it back to my laptop and continue using it.
- basically, seems to work on any surface - its doesn't work flawlessly on any surface, but opposed to other laser mice i've used it seems to almost always work in less than desirable situations.
Additionally, here are some things that I don't really like -
- 'swiping' in programs like roxio toast - the magic mouse is, for me, totally unusable in programs such as Roxio Toast. Barely touching it causes the program to register keystrokes which cause the files to highlight (as if you were going to re name them), amongst other annoying things. I'm not really sure who is to blame here, because obviously the toast program works fine using a regular mouse, but its interesting to note how these two just don't seem to work together.
- the battery - its not rechargeable, which kind of surprises me. If it had an optional USB cable to use it and recharge the battery while using it, it would be unstoppable. However, as it stands - it takes 2 AAs and while apple claim they last 4-6 months i've seen it run down as quickly as 2. As I continue to own it I get better at turning it off when its in my bag or just simply not being used, and I'm certain that my failure to turn it off was the reason the battery went down so quickly before. Apparently it is supposed to 'sleep' when not used, regardless of the switch being on or off - but hitting the switch is saving my batteries in a major way.
Over all - its around $75, and it works great. I've seen a lot of bluetooth mice which are easily in the $50 range, and I would be doubtful that they would sync and work as smoothly with OS X as this Apple product would. I say, either get the cheapest mouse that works, or splurge for this - I don't see what another bluetooth mouse would offer that would be worth it to pay almost the same amount as this apple one.
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