Published on January 21, 2010.
TweetI recognize my not really inventive attitude, but I think there is no better summarize about my feelings.
Look
Well, just by itself, the mouse is really beautiful. I admit it would not be worse with a soft white light coming from the Apple logo, or from the sides of the mouse, but I think it looks really nice on my black desk. Furthermore its bright tactile surface reflects as a mirror does which makes the mouse “pop”.
Feel
My Apple computer is a Macbook Pro (of de 5th family I think. It looks like theses ones and costs me 1200 €), so it has a built-in mutltitouch trackpad which works very well. However, I missed my dear old PC mouse. You know, there is something really different between a trackpad and a mouse : the depth. The Magic mouse is really nice from this point of view: it allies the power of the multitouch technology and, with its subtle curves, the presence of a classic computer mouse.
First approach
There is nothing easier than connecting this mouse with your OS X based computer. Just power on the mouse (with a little brushed button like the power on/off on iPod Nano). If Bluetooth is enabled on your computer, a window should pop up, print you some messages, and disappear. That’s it. The mouse is running on your Mac. It’s a bit strange at first, but I got used to its smooth surface blazingly fast.
Get ready to ride
Since the mouse is available to sale, you can read everywhere that you must use MagicPrefs. That’s why I downloaded it to custom my mouse gestures. This tool is really nice (I don’t understand why Apple doesn’t provide such a software with Snow Leopard). But it has one major drawback: it doesn’t support tab (⇥) composed keyboard shortcuts. I wanted to use them for my Firefox (with ⌃⇧⇥ and ⌃⇥ to switch between opened tabs). After digging, let’s say, 2”40 seconds with Google, I found BetterTouchTool, a software similar to MagicPrefs but which is far more flexible (and it works for touchpads too). So I dropped MagicPrefs and installed BTT. Well, I can say I’ve never felt so relaxed with a computer (except when I switch from PHP to Python, but…).
Conclusion
To put it in a nutshell, I highly recommend you this mouse. Unless you are a narrow-minded conservative fundamentalist of keyboard as the only real interface with a computer, the Magic Mouse is really pleasant and easy to use. A nice purchase in my humble opinion.