The difference is best understood as a change in the user’s point of view. Instead of pulling the scrollbar down, you push the content up. The change signals a huge shift not just in scroll direction, but in user interface design where gestures are used to manipulate content instead of on-screen interface controls like scrollbars and sliders.

Scrollbar, We Hardly Knew Ye

The venerable scrollbar has been with us for ages. It was probably invented at Xerox PARC in the 70s, well before the graphic user interface (GUI) Macintosh was released in 1984. Back in those days, if you wanted to control something in the GUI, you had to be able to point at a control and click on it. The scrollbar was an obvious visual control to manipulate an application’s viewport, the section of content visible in the current window. It was versatile as well. The scroller not only provided the means to move the viewport, but its position also indicated where you were in the document.

One of the first steps away from direct manipulation of visual controls was the scroll wheel mouse, introduced in 1995 as a different way to move the scrollbar. Apple’s touch-sensitive trackpad and Mighty Mouse later used two-finger gestures for scrolling. However, the controls were still present on the screen to provide visual feedback on the scroller position.

The downside of the GUI was that every control needed to take up some real estate on the screen. Pretty soon we had apps with toolbars that were bigger than the content area.

iOSification

After over 25 years of scrollbars in Mac OS X, Apple was willing to rethink the UI for the touchscreen when the iPhone was introduced. Gestures provide a way around the need for an on-screen control for every GUI interaction and devote more space to the content itself (quite important on a small screen). Scrollbars were no longer controls, and remained only as a visual indicator of where you were. Instead, you moved content in the viewport by direct manipulation – you pushed the content itself up or down by making a gesture with your finger. This direct manipulation of the content itself is so intuitive on a touchscreen that even toddlers quickly grasp its use.

Different Strokes for Different Folks

On the touchscreen we have grown accustomed to using gestures to manipulate content directly. Unfortunately, when applied to the desktop this approach creates some cognitive dissonance for longtime Mac users as we try to use two-finger scrolling or mouse gestures they way we were taught, to move scrollbars indirectly.

What If You Don’t Know About Gestures?

Because the scrollbar fades out of view until moved, the scrollbars are not easily discovered and there is no visual indication of how to move content in the viewport. We rely on our memory of when we used to see scrollbars. In some applications like Safari, it is not clear where we are in the viewport because there is no scroller or thumb to tell us. Not only is it nigh impossible to discover how to scroll the content for someone unfamiliar with gestures, there is no indication (beyond cut off graphics and text) that you *need* to scroll down the page to see anything below the current viewport.

As it stands, the Lion UI is also a bit inconsistent now. Mail, Address Book, iCal, Safari, etc. all sport the new fading scroll indicators. However, iTunes still uses a scrollbar. Of course, gestures work the iOS way, and the scrollbar works the Mac way. Confusing. I have to think that other controls on desktop apps that could be replaced with gestures, like the zoom slider in iPhoto, might also disappear eventually.

Frankly, Apple’s human interface guidelines and enforcement of those guidelines in the App Store become even more important once you widely adopt gestures. They just need to be consistent. If you can’t see a control on-screen, you are going to try standard gestures. Developers must adhere to those expected behaviors if users are to have any chance of figuring out how to scroll. Can you imagine an app with no scrollbar on-screen that requires you to use four-finger swipes to scroll? How would you figure that out? Would you bother before deleting the app in frustration? Could you imagine a future with mandatory 3-minute introductory videos to explain all the non-standard gestures?

It’s Not All Bad

The scrollbar in OS X Lion does have an advantage in that it doesn’t take up as much space and visual weight in the interface. Gestures provide enough flexibility in control schemes that we don’t have to rely on a mouse click on the scrollbar control to move the viewport and a mouse click on the content to move the cursor. We have multiple ways to interact directly with the content. Content is highlighted before UI controls. What remains to be seen is if the change will prove as comfortable in practice as the theory might suggest.

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One- or Two-Button?

One of the most confusing things about a Mac mouse is its lack of physical left and right buttons. Both the Magic Mouse and the Mighty Mouse which preceded it have only one click function, clicking anywhere on the mouse, but it’s possible to set up a secondary or right-click, too.

To enable a right-click, open up Mouse in System Preferences (>System Preferences) and find the Secondary Click setting. On the Magic Mouse, you can set the secondary click to either be on the right, or the left, for left-handed users. To use the right-click function when it’s turned on, perform your click on the right-hand side (or left, if you set it to left) of the mouse.

You can enable two-finger tap secondary clicking in the System Preferences>Trackpad options. Trackpads also have the option of a one-finger secondary click, where you click in the corner of your choice on the trackpad to perform a secondary click instead of using a two-finger tap.

If you uncheck the option for Secondary Click, then to perform a right click, you will need to hold down Control on the keyboard and click with the mouse. Clicking on the left or right-hand side without holding the Control key will perform a left-click.

Scrolling With Inertia

Both the Magic Mouse and trackpads have the option to scroll with inertia. This is the effect you see on the iPhone, where flicking makes the scroll carry on after you let go. The option can be found alongside the checkbox for Scroll, which for mice is under the One Finger heading in the relevant Systems Preferences pane, and for trackpads is under Two Fingers.

You can also turn off scrolling altogether, but that would become tiresome after a while, because it means either using the cursor keys to scroll, or dragging the scrollbar on the right of a window. I imagine you’d be turning scrolling back on fairly soon after turning it off.

Getting a Closer Look

System Preferences (under either Trackpad or Mouse) also offers the option to turn on Screen Zoom for your input device. By holding one of either Control, Option or Command, depending on your choice in the settings, you can then scroll upwards on your device to zoom in on your screen, and scroll down to zoom back out again. This is great for the visually impaired. There are some other options for Screen Zoom which let you change how the screen moves in relation to the cursor, and turn image smoothing while zoomed on or off.

Navigating Using a Mouse or Trackpad

If you use a Magic Mouse or a trackpad, you can turn on swipe to navigate, which lets you go back and forward in your web history, jump between pages in a Preview document, and much more, depending on which application you’re using. On a mouse, you swipe either left or right with two fingers, and for a trackpad it’s three. There are no settings for swipe to navigate; it’s a simple on or off setting.

Trackpad Multitouch

If you own an iPhone or iPad, and you like being able to pinch to zoom, and rotate with two fingers, you’ll be happy to hear that the new glass trackpads on MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs, as well as the Magic Trackpad, support both these multitouch gestures, and a few more. Each gesture can be turned on and off individually, and additional gestures to choose from include swiping up and down with four fingers to access Exposé and the Application Switcher (⌘⇥). These gestures are the best thing about Apple’s Magic Trackpad.

These are just the options which Apple has built-in to Macs by default. With an application like MagicPrefs, you can add even more functionality to your mouse or trackpad such as custom gestures other than the Apple specified ones. If you have any other input device-related tips or tricks, feel free to share in the comments.

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Removed from its minimalistic packaging, a press of the power button and the Magic Trackpad is recognized as a generic mouse by any Bluetooth-enabled Mac, even one running Windows. An update for Boot Camp provides basic mouse actions, but the “magic” of gestures is currently available via software update only for OS X 10.6.4 on Intel Macs—sorry, PowerPC users.

As for hardware, Apple’s industrial design superhero Jonathan Ive no doubt intended for form to follow function. The device is the surface, approximately five by four inches of tactile-pleasing glass.

Flipped upside down, the two rubber feet at the bottom are, in effect, right and left mouse buttons. “Clicking” the corners when the trackpad rests on any hard surface provides tactile feedback. Brilliant.

On its side, the Magic Trackpad is far less than an inch thin, excluding the cylindrical housing for two AA batteries. One end unscrews for battery access, and the other end holds the power button.

If this design seems familiar, it is. The Magic Trackpad is a perfect fit for the Apple Wireless Keyboard, except for one thing. It’s not a mouse.

From Photoshop to StarCraft to Pages, the lack of precision compared to a $5-off mouse a close-out table at Best Buy was constantly irritating. Even when precision was not an issue, like scrolling in a web browser, the Magic Trackpad–any trackpad–will simply not be as smooth as a mouse.

If the comparison seems unfair, it is because the mouse is the device the Magic Trackpad is meant to replace. On a MacBook, the multitouch trackpad is a portability compromise–the best portable input device ever made–but still a compromise. Unfortunately, the Magic Trackpad doesn’t even compare well against a MacBook trackpad.

It’s not the size of the trackpad, but how you use it that matters. The MacBook trackpad is well-integrated in front of the keyboard and as part of the palm rest, allowing for thumb or finger movement, and more importantly two-handed usage.

Who drags a file by clicking with a finger on one hand and dragging with a finger on the other? Not someone using a Magic Trackpad. While you could use a three-finger swipe via preferences, you’d lose the fabulous navigation swipe. As for placing the Magic Trackpad in front of the keyboard, I found the larger size and lack of palm rest integration hindering more than helping. So, what’s the solution?

Besides being the ultimate keyboard in conjunction with a Home Theater Mac, the as-yet-non-existent Magic Keyboard would eliminate the last difference between the laptop and desktop Mac experience in terms of input device. And make no mistake, with seven of 10 Macs sold last quarter being laptops, portability is the future.

“Just as you would on a MacBook,” asserts the blurb on the back of the box regarding the multitouch experience of the Magic Trackpad; however, that’s wrong. While the Magic Trackpad is the next step towards a multitouch future, it’s not there yet, and therefore I cannot recommend it.

But just wait till the Magic Keyboard gets here.

Apple’s not going to just release a $10,000 touchscreen table computer (ie. Microsoft Surface) and hope people will line up to buy it. Instead, Apple will slowly shift our computer mannerisms $199 at a time (iPhone) until we’re completely touch. Buttons will be a distant memory like typewriters and Windows Me. This dream of using computers, Minority Report style, starts with the death of the computer mouse.

A simple truth is that my 10-year-old sister has grown up never using a computer mouse. She’s used notebook trackpads with her index finger and the touch-sensitive glass on my iPhone and iPad. The Magic Trackpad will be her input device of choice no matter what device she uses and the mouse is simply foreign in the way that the keys of a typewriter never felt right to me. Apple’s taken the steps necessary to remove the mouse forever, including making the Magic Trackpad compatible with Mac OS and Windows Vista & 7.

The Magic Mouse comes with the iMac and Mac Pro which are two out of six computers that Apple sells. One out of three Macs comes with a Magic Mouse, and for $69 more, you can swap that out for a Magic Trackpad and never have to use the mouse at all. The Magic Trackpad is the same height, depth and length as the Apple Keyboard and fits snugly right next to the keyboard or a foot away, depending on your preference. The trackpad is the button and the box has a list of gestures to get started.

Of course, this isn’t a review of the Magic Trackpad since I haven’t used one yet, but I’m trying to weigh in on the future of how we interact with our Apple computers, or at least how Apple wants us to interact with them. The keyboard still reigns supreme and I prefer a physical keyboard to the one on my iPad or iPhone, but there are small changes I see that are making it obvious that change is coming faster than we think. Keyboards of today require very little pressure compared to keyboards of the 80′s and typewriters in the 40′s and 50′s. Pushing today’s keyboard keys are so easy that a child can type without issue. This decrease in pressure requirements is preparing us for touch keyboards that require no pressure, just as improvements to Apple’s trackpad have eventually turned into a dedicated peripheral that we will happily buy because we love the trackpad on our MacBooks.

I have to think big picture, though, and make that claim that iOS will soon make its way to our laptops and desktops, and soon the keyboard will be obsolete. Then, Apple will announce the last iteration of the Mac OS as iOS becomes a unified standard for how we get work done. The App Store will be the only way to get apps on your devices, software pirating drops, we touch instead of click and our fingers become the only input device you need.

Wow, that was quite a glimpse into the future in the length of two posts to Twitter, but that’s where I see it going.

This future is both far off and not so far when you look at where we’ve been in the past four years. In 2006, the Mighty Mouse had more than a few buttons and our keyboards had many keys and our phones were all keyboard from Windows Mobile to Palm OS to Blackberry and touch was something we did on notebook trackpads. This was before the glass trackpad and our trackpads had physical & clickable buttons. Today, Apple’s product line is 50 percent mobile and we do the majority of our “mobile input” with our fingers on iPods, iPhones, iPads and MacBook Trackpads and soon (let’s say a year from now) Apple will say that it has sold millions of Magic Trackpads and we’ll learn that a majority of desktop users use their finger as the primary input device. This shift is happening fast.

The computer interfaces depicted in Minority Report are still a decade away, but we’re prepared now and our fingers are moving more than ever, controlling objects on retina displays and interacting with 30″ displays via trackpads. We’re doing it all right now and, once again, Apple is ahead of the curve, but still tip-toeing. Apple isn’t ditching the mouse completely but it’s testing the water to see how we react. Judging by yesterday’s buzz around the Magic Trackpad, I’m confident we’ve sent a message to Apple that iOS is ready for the mainstream and we’re ready to make touch the default input for tomorrow’s computers.

“Make no mistake about it,” Dan says, “the era of the familiar PC mouse is coming to an end. It may not be a 2012-style apocalypse (and the mouse will surely hang on in some form for many years to come), but the door is slowly shutting on the universal acceptance of this single iconic piece of hardware that we have equated with personal computing for decades….”

I beg to differ.

Dan suggests that the mouse will be replaced by an array of touch input devices and icon-focused operating systems built (not always for the better, I congratulate him for acknowledging) around expediency over flexibility, noting that touchscreen tablet PCs have been around for years but never generated more than niche-level consumer interest until Apple’s iPhone, followed by the iPod touch, changed that, finally popularizing one-to-one touch among the masses. At least to a point.

Disruptive Success

Dan predicts “disruptive success” for the iPad in building a larger touch environment that has so far received almost universal praise, noting that while it may not be as productivity-friendly as your ThinkPad or MacBook (to say the least), he thinks adding a Bluetooth keyboard and Apple’s iWork apps will give you a reasonable approximation of a laptop experience.

I disagree. One of my biggest gripes about the iPad is its lack of support for the very device Dan Ackerman seems enthusiastic about shoveling dirt on the coffin of — the mouse. Even with an external keyboard, you still have to poke around on the too-easily-smeared-with-finger-grease touchscreen for pointing, clicking, and dragging, the body-English associated with which, even when the iPad is mounted on a stand or dock, can most charitably be described as awkward and non-intuitive, involving reaching past the keyboard at a clumsy angle.

Touchpads a Touchscreen Trojan Horse?

Ackerman, suggests that multitouch touchpads have served as a Trojan Horse for touchscreens for some years now, with laptops outselling desktop PCs and the portables’ ubiquitous touchpads acclimating people to touch control, Apple again leading the way, incorporating multitouch gestures into its oversized trackpads, observing that nowadays it’s hard to find a laptop touchpad that doesn’t support some kind of swiping, zooming, or flipping with two or more fingers.

Well, yes, but…I’m a dyed-in-the-wool laptop computer aficionado, and I own an aluminum unibody MacBook that supports Apple’s latest gesture-supporting multitouch trackpad technology, but guess what? I virtually never make use of it, with my MacBook spending most of its runtime mounted on a stand hooked up to an external keyboard, and not only one conventional mouse, but also a rollerbar, a foot mouse, and from time to time trackballs, freestanding touchpads, or a graphics tablet — all input modes that appeal to me a great deal more than pawing the display screen.

Even on my other laptops that I use in mobile mode, I almost always hook up an external mouse if I’m going to be using the machine for more than a few minutes at a time, and I always carry a mouse in my laptop case or backpack.

Touch Migrating Beyond Tablets and Smartphones

Ackerman concedes that the laptop-to-iPad comparison may not be a one-to-one match, and that the tablet device is not a fully workable replacement for even a netbook for on-the-go computing, but remains adamant that icon-driven touch interfaces will continue to migrate into more-traditional laptops and netbooks, with OS desktop interfaces increasingly presented in a manner supporting different input methods, such as touch, instead of being primarily mouse-driven.

That view is, regrettably, corroborated by a recent Gartner Group report that predicts more than 50 percent of PCs purchased for users under the age of 15 will have touchscreens by 2015. “What we’re going to see is the younger generation beginning to use touchscreen computers ahead of enterprises,” comments Leslie Fiering, Gartner research vice president. “By 2015, we expect more than 50 percent of PCs purchased for users under the age of 15 will have touchscreens, up from fewer than 2 percent in 2009.”

Schism Developing Between Touch Aficionados and Professional Traditionalists

However, Gartner also perceives a developing schism between younger consumer users and serious workers in the enterprise, projecting that fewer than 10 percent of PCs sold to enterprises for mainstream knowledge workers in 2015 will have touchscreens.

Gartner predicts the overwhelming majority of slate, tablet and touch-enabled convertible devices planned for 2010 will have a consumer focus, and that resistance to touch-enabled devices’ adoption by serious workers in the enterprise can be attributed to heavy requirements for typing and text input, the “muscle memory” of mouse users, and the potential problems of moving a user’s hands from the keyboard to the touchscreen creating particular adoption barriers for knowledge workers. It will be consumers and education users who will form the preponderance of earliest adopters for touch-enabled PCs and notebooks.

“As with many recent technology advances, touch adoption will be led by consumers and only gradually get accepted by the enterprise,” says Ms. Fiering. “What will be different here is the expected widespread adoption of touch by education, so that an entire generation will graduate within the next 10 to 15 years for whom touch input is totally natural.”

Even Dan Ackerman admits computer mice are not going to disappear overnight, despite the premature obituary in his column’s title, but he still contends that like New York Times obits for aging celebrities, the computer mouse has already been written and filed away, and it may not be that long before it gets to run. I suggest and hope it will be a good long time yet before that becomes necessary.

Image courtesy of Flickr user raneko

Holiday spending has seen sales of Apple’s Magic Mouse soar. According to a report by NPD and covered today by AppleInsider, last month saw a twofold increase in Apple’s share of domestic mice sales. By the end of November, Apple had captured 10 percent of the market.

NPD analyst Stephen Baker told AppleInsider:

Sales in November were through the roof. The Magic Mouse had the best month for a mouse product from Apple that we’ve ever seen.

It’s the first time Apple’s share of the domestic mouse market has ever reached double digits, and even more impressive considering the data was compiled from standalone sales. Units sold with new iMacs were not counted.

While that’s fantastic news for Apple, I find myself wondering whether those new Magic Mouse owners aren’t going to be feeling somewhat disappointed because, despite its name, the Magic Mouse is anything but magical. For a company that gets so much of its user experience spot-on, it does keep missing the target with its pointing devices.

Andy Ihnatko said it best:

I can’t think of a single good Apple mouse released this millennium. Ideologically, they’ve all been covered with spray-glitter and rainbow stickers.

When I got my Magic Mouse I admired its diminutive form factor and minimalist lines but it was clearly not an ergonomic design. That super slimline, ground-hugging shape took some getting used to. But aesthetic and ergonomic matters aside, I think the thorniest issue isn’t with the hardware at all. The problem, as I see it, is one of user perception.

You see, users accustomed to the touchy-goodness of an iPhone or MacBook trackpad lament the lack of similar functionality in their supposedly ‘magic’ mouse. The major criticism is usually expressed in the form of common questions, like, Why is there no pinch to zoom functionality? Why do we have to click, when we could tap? Why aren’t more swipe-gestures supported?

“It’s just a software fix,” reviewers on popular Apple tech sites have concluded, “Apple will likely add that functionality later in a software update.”

Well, I don’t think so. In fact, I think Apple will intentionally avoid adding further touch functionality to this mouse, and I think I know why.

Be Careful What You Wish For

In the relatively short time since the Magic Mouse was released in late October, several third-party applications have appeared, both free and paid, that (ahem) ‘tap’ into the Magic Mouse software and foist upon the device all that pinching, swiping, multi-touch functionality people think they want. Well, I also thought I wanted those things…until I got them.

Remember how, with the Mighty Mouse, you had to handle it with care because those side-buttons could be way too sensitive? They were so sensitive, in fact, many people disabled those buttons entirely because they proved such a nuisance. Turns out, having multifunctional touch-sensitive controls all across the surface of the Magic Mouse turns the thing into a far greater nuisance than its “mighty” predecessor ever was.

I swiftly discovered that controls I wanted to trigger (say, a three-finger-tap) often wouldn’t register. I’d spend an inordinate amount of time obsessive-compulsively tapping the mouse with minimal success. Pinching and zooming was literally painful, transforming my hand into a deformed claw of knotted knuckles and cramp. Yet, for all my efforts, it still never zoomed in a controlled, predictable manner.

Worse still, functions I didn’t intentionally invoke would trigger while I was doing something else entirely. It got to the point where simply moving the pointer across the screen — an action so natural and normal I normally give it no conscious thought — was now an event demanding deliberate care and attention. I tried two of the most popular apps and got the same results each time.

In short , it’s not a software problem, but rather, a limitation imposed by the very form factor of the mouse. As long as Apple wants its flagship pointing device to be small, svelte and sexy, it’s just not going to be the right shape and size for full-fledged multi-touch controls.

Software like MagicPrefs introduces hugely varied additional functionality

Apple, I’m sure, did a lot of R&D to determine what were the most appropriate default touch controls for the Magic Mouse. Therefore, a feature’s absence is a deliberate choice. It makes perfect sense. One of the most celebrated aspects of Apple’s user-experience is its consistency; across all Macs the user experience is predictable and dependable. There are rarely unexpected (or unwelcome) surprises. Much of the time, that’s made possible by Apple’s minimalist, ‘less-is-more’ approach to interface design.

That is why so many people disliked the Mighty Mouse. In trying to do so much it was just too unpredictable and ruined the user experience. And that is why the Magic Mouse is so limited. It’s better this way.

I just wonder if all those new Magic Mouse owners will agree?

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Today Apple revealed the Magic Mouse — the world’s first multi-touch mouse. Inspired by the multi touch technology in the iPhone and trackpad on modern MacBooks, Magic Mouse is the zero-button, gesture-sensing, wireless pointing-device of your dreams.

Its design is quintessentially Apple. The sleek, minimal lines of Magic Mouse definitely look like something straight out of Jonathan Ive’s workshop. Apple describe it as an “entirely new kind of mouse” that’s “Intuitive, smart [and] dynamic.”

But unlike its distant (and ill-received) ancestor the Mighty Mouse, this new pointing device really does do things no other mouse has ever done before. Apple says “We’ve built a better mouse” and, if you hated the Mighty Mouse, you’ll be hoping Apple isn’t exaggerating, but have got things right this time!

The top shell of Magic Mouse is one huge seamless multi-touch sensor that does away entirely with buttons and scroll-nubs. (Great news for those frustrated Mighty Mouse users with gunky nubs. You know what I mean.)

Magic Mouse tracks and clicks like a regular mouse, but since the entire shell is touch-sensitive, it’s possible to click practically anywhere along its upper surface. That said, Secondary-click (right click) functionality is achieved, as you’d expect, by clicking in the top-right area of the device.

Click Anywhere

Scrolling is achieved by sliding, or swiping, a finger along the surface, rather like you would on an iPhone or iPod touch. Magic Mouse even senses the speed at which you ‘scroll’ — Apple calls this “momentum scrolling.” Scrolling is also supported horizontally and also through 360 degrees.

360° scrolling

Just like an iPhone or a MacBook’s trackpad, Magic Mouse detects and tracks the number of fingers you are using at any given time. So, two finger swipes allows a user to move between albums in iTunes, web pages in Safari, pictures in iPhoto…you get the idea.

Two finger gestures

My immediate concern was room for misinterpretation; a dumb, regular two-button mouse can’t get all clever and start deciding it knows what I want to do. Those clunky buttons have to be pressed. That’s the only option. It might be dumb, but it’s predictable. However, Apple assures us Magic Mouse is smart enough not to be too clever.

Inside Magic Mouse is a chip that tells it exactly what you want to do. Which means Magic Mouse won’t confuse a scroll with a swipe. It even knows when you’re just resting your hand on it.

If, for some unfathomable reason, you don’t like your fancy new multi-touch mouse offering multi-touch functionality, you can choose to disable some, or all, of those features.

Magic Mouse supports all the old mousey tricks you’ve come to expect on the Mac; for example, holding Control and “scrolling” vertically will zoom in and out just as it always has with a wheel or nub-wielding mouse. Like the wireless Mighty Mouse before it, this one connects to your Mac via Bluetooth, enjoying a 33 foot radius. Unlike the Mighty Mouse, this one uses laser tracking technology which is far superior to the old optical tracking method. This provides far higher tracking resolution, which means far higher tracking accuracy across almost any surface.

Bluetooth wireless, laser tracking, and multi-touch goodness sucks down a lot of juice. Apple says Magic Mouse makes the most of its two standard AA batteries by employing power management features, making it more energy efficient. But Apple also doesn’t say how much life you can expect from your batteries. I’m not sure yet whether that ought to be cause for concern, but in any case, no one really takes Apple’s battery-life claims seriously, particularly on a first-generation device.

Magic Mouse requires Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later. Starting today it comes as standard with the new iMac, or for $69 is now available to order on its own via Apple’s online Store. Get all the juicy details, and watch a video demonstration here on Apple’s Mighty Mouse website.

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However, most engineering effort with computer mice has been directed toward I/O interface (ADB, USB) and tracking sensor (optical, laser) advances and more recently wireless technologies (RF, Bluetooth), as well as improved ergonomics. Multi-button mice with scroll wheels became the standard configuration (although not with Apple mice) in the mid-’90s, popularized by Microsoft’s IntelliMouse Explorer, but with a few exceptions like the minuscule trackball on Apple’s 2005 Mighty Mouse, scrolling hardware technology didn’t change much between 1996 and 2006 when Logitech unveiled its MicroGear Precision Scroll Wheel.

Steam-Age Technology Revisited

The MicroGear wheel represented refinement more than revolution, with the wheel itself fashioned of relatively heavy metal instead of lightweight plastic. While enhanced durability would be a side-benefit, mouse scroll wheels have not been prone to failure from wear, and the engineering rationale behind what is essentially a heavy flywheel — steam-age technology revisited — is that when in freewheel mode physical inertia keeps it spinning and able to whip through long documents with minimum effort. If you prefer standard scroll wheel click detents, they can be toggled on and off by pressing down on the scroll wheel.

All of that works just fine with Apple’s standard OS X mouse drivers, but if you install Logitech’s Control Center driver software, the MicroGear mouse will also support lateral scrolling by pressing the wheel to one side or the other, and a raft of programming options. The Logitech MicroGear Precision Scroll Wheel is used in a wide range of Logitech mice, such as the Logitech V550 Nano Cordless Laser Mouse and it represents the high water mark on mouse scroll wheel technology so far in my experience.

Wheel-Less Scrolling

However, while the MicroGear scroll wheel, as noted, is arguably the most perfected implementation of generic analog scroll wheel technology, there’s something new and different in mouse scrolling available this fall, namely the new wheel-less Touch Scroll four-way optical scrolling technology Targus has introduced with its new line of “for Mac” computer mice. To actuate Touch Scroll and its Quick Scroll function, you move your fingertip laterally or longitudinally on the optical sensor that takes a place of a conventional scroll wheel at the center top of the mouse.

Scrolling speed is determined by how quickly and far you move your finger. I’ve tested two different Quick Scroll Targus mice, Bluetooth Laser and RF, and find that it works very well, although I found scrolling in small increments for precision tasks wasn’t quite as easy to modulate as it is with a good scroll wheel like the MicroGear (although better than some conventional scroll wheels I’ve used), but I think that could be partly a matter of getting used to this mode of scrolling. It’s actually quite intuitive, and lateral (sideways) scrolling requires no proprietary driver software, although Targus does offer the latter for a variety of programmable button functions with these mice.

Touch Scroll is available with the $49.99 Targus For Mac Wireless Mouse and $69.99 Bluetooth Laser Mouse.

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I never thought I would say that about a wireless mouse, having not been a fan of wireless input devices. There’s the hassle with batteries, the pairing tedium with Bluetooth, batteries make wireless mice heavier. Then there’s the latency that has plagued wireless mice — that microsecond of hesitation before the cursor responds. Drives me nuts.

I’m not really being inconsistent here. The V550 Nano is the first wireless mouse I’ve tested that gives me nothing to complain about regarding responsiveness. The Nano is there instantly as soon as the computer is awake and there’s no cursor response latency I can detect. Tracking is excellent. All presumably thanks to the 2.4 GHz RF wireless technology which Logitech says provides an exceptionally robust signal that exchanges data 300 times faster than conventional 27 MHz wireless. I’ll take RF over Bluetooth for mouse wireless anytime.

The V550 Nano’s USB RF receiver is tiny, protruding less than a quarter-inch from the USB port. You should be able to leave it plugged in when you carry your laptop in a computer case or backpack. 

The receiver also can be stored inside the mouse’s battery bay. If it ever gets lost or damaged, or if you want a second one for another computer, spares are available for $10.00.

The V550 product bundle contains the mouse, an external USB receiver dock with USB extension cord, two “Clip and Go” docks in silver and black, a metal box to store the spare dock and supplied dock removal tool, two AA alkaline batteries, two solvent cleaning wipes to prepare the laptop surface for attaching the dock modules, and a Quick-start guide.

The V550 with its two AA batteries is heavier than my featherlight MacMice DangerMouse, but so well-engineered and comfortably-balanced I can live with the extra inertia of rest. Generously-sized, slippery glide pads on the mouse bottom help.

“Notebook mouse” notwithstanding, the V550 Nano is larger than some “full-sized” mice I’ve used, and I find it comfortable. The styling is attractively understated, sort of like how Mercedes-Benz automobiles don’t knock you out with their styling, but look tastefully classy. The analogy carries over to the V550′s materials and build quality, and the feel of its scroll wheel and button switches, which have similar positive and reassuring tactile feedback to switchgear on high-end European cars.

Speaking of control feedback, I’ve long advocated low-effort, short-travel input controls, and the V550′s buttons are among the lowest-effort I’ve ever encountered, to the point where their hair-trigger responsiveness has resulted in some unintentional clicking. I can’t quite bring myself to complain about this, since I’ve lobbied vigorously and long for low-effort controls, but I’ve had to make some body-English adjustments. The buttons have a positive action, and the MicroGear metal-alloy scroll wheel feels substantial and precise, shiftable between freewheeling and click detent action with a downward click. In freewheeling mode the metal wheel has enough inertial weight to keep rolling for some time when spun.

Getting to the V550 Nano’s marquee feature — its Clip-and-Go dock — lets you clip the mouse to the outside of your laptop, making make it easier to use a mouse with a notebook when moving from kitchen to living room or one’s desk to a meeting. You won’t have to choose between grabbing your mouse or a cup of coffee.

The dock modules are for one-time attachment only, and can’t be removed and replaced or switched to another computer. They’re engineered with adhesive that sticks tenaciously to a properly prepared (solvent-cleaned) surface, so need careful positioning exactly where you want them the first time. If you do need to remove the dock module, the supplied removal tool will help do that without damaging your computer’s surface.

Logitech offers replacement modules for a nominal $2.00. You can find out more about that here.

Attaching the mouse to the dock is easy and it seems fairly secure once attached, although in certain circumstances, such as carrying the laptop under your arm in a crowded area, present some danger of it being bumped off in contact. 

The mouse powers up instantly when moved on the mouse pad or when the computer wakes up, with none of the response lag that is typical of Bluetooth wireless mice. A power button located on the mouse bottom also facilitates manual power-on/power-off. Battery life is claimed to be as much as 18 months, which addresses another reservation I’ve had about wireless mice.

The V-500 Nano mouse is designed to be plug-and-play so you don’t need to install any software drivers in order to use the basic mouse features, but if you download Logitech’s Control Center driver software (or have it already installed to support another Logitech device), the scroll wheel can also be configured with scrolling and acceleration speeds to your preferred levels of response, and to support horizontal scrolling by nudging the wheel to the left or right.

There is also an application button located behind the scroll wheel that allows you to configure your choice of Finder actions in the Control Center. All good stuff.

I think this probably all-round the best mouse I’ve ever used. Excellent even if the Clip-and-Go feature isn’t particularly appealing, and of course if it is, the Logitech V500 Nano will be uniquely interesting. The Logitech V550 Nano cordless laser mouse for notebooks sells in the U.S. for $59.99.

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I’ve mentioned this quite a few times before, but my place of employment is a Mac shop. Being a Mac shop we have dozens of Mighty “Mice” lying around. At first I did not really like the Mighty Mouse, but after using one for a few days, I came to love it. The only flaw I have found so far is that the scroll ball always stops working after a few months because of dirt build up on the sensors.

Luckily, I have found a few methods to revive your Mighty Mouse scroll ball.

1. Push hard on the ball itself and scroll around
2. Wipe the scroll ball with a Wet One or an alcohol prep pad while scrolling around (Anything quick drying should do the trick – just don’t get it too wet)
3. Combine methods 1 and 2

There is nothing more annoying than having a broken scroll ball. Hopefully this trick helps all you frustrated Mighty Mouse users out there!

Have you found any tricks that have worked well for you?

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