GigaOM » Magic Mouse

Quick tip: Tame your mouse on OS X Lion

Geoffrey Goetz — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 21:04:39 +0000

You may have found that since upgrading to OS X Lion, your browsing experience with Safari has changed slightly. Your web page could be jumping out at you for no obvious reason. You might just be unknowingly double-tapping your mouse, causing the page to zoom. Touch sensitivity in Lion is greater than it was in Snow Leopard by default. By double-tapping a second time, you should be able to put things right again, but here are a few tips for correcting this behavior:

1. Disable zooming in mouse preferences

If this is really annoying you, simply disable this feature entirely. You can do this by unchecking the Smart Zoom feature on the Point & Click settings in the Mouse section of System Preferences.

2. Install a better preference configuration tool

On the other hand, if you do want to use your touch sensitive mouse to its fullest potential, consider installing either MagicPrefs or BetterTouchTool. Even if you’re not having problems, you may find either of these two tools very handy. Both tools are free and have recently been updated to allow the user to take much more fine-grained control over their touch experience on OS X Lion. For example, with BetterTouchTool, you can control the sensitivity of the Magic Mouse, and how it registers touch events.

3. Replace your mouse with a Magic Trackpad

Finally, it may be time to just get rid of that antiquated input device called a “mouse” and get a Magic Trackpad. Even if you have a MacBook, you may find the location of the Magic Touchpad to either side of the keyboard more ergonomically comfortable than to have it sandwiched in the middle front of the keyboard. Personally, I’ve found that I use my Magic Trackpad far more often in OS X Lion than I use my Magic Mouse, even though the situation was reversed when I was using Snow Leopard.

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4 Apple Purchase Regrets

Darrell Etherington — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 23:00:54 +0000

I spend a lot of money on Apple products, and while most of the time I enjoy them immensely, there have been a few times when I’ve experienced significant buyer’s remorse. Here’s a breakdown of what Apple products I’ve found worms at the core of:

iPod Touch (1st Generation)

This was one of my most anticipated Apple purchases of all time. I was nearly hopping with excitement about it, as I couldn’t get the iPhone where I was, but there were a couple of problems with this early iOS device. First, it didn’t have third-party apps at this point. Second, it had very little storage compared even to my iPod with video. While the interface experience was amazing, it wouldn’t prove a watershed moment in my gadget-wielding career, like the iPhone 3G was when I got it nearly a year later.

My problem isn’t so much with the iPod touch itself; it’s that I bought the first generation of the product. The touch seems to be one of the pieces of hardware Apple is most guilty about artificially hobbling in terms of features, something which I think they do to differentiate the product from the iPhone. In retrospect, I should’ve waited to see features introduced that I really would’ve appreciated in a mobile media player, like a camera, better onboard storage or the still-absent 3G connectivity.

Magic Mouse

The only reason I didn’t include the Mighty Mouse on this list is because the Magic Mouse was more disappointing, since I was expecting so much from it because of its predecessor. Sure, it tracks better than the Mighty Mouse, but what mouse doesn’t, really?

The touch features of this device are kind of neat, in a gimmicky sort of way, but they aren’t really as useful as a trackwheel/middle button, unless you count the fact that they never get gummed up with dust, which has only happened to me with Apple mice anyway, so I don’t. It’s also a battery hog, and it’s not particularly comfortable.

I recently tried getting my Magic Mouse set up again, because I needed a spare input device as a temporary stop-gap, and I think it’s actually broken. It might still be under warranty, but I don’t even care. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

MacBook Pro

This one isn’t really anything to do with any fault on Apple’s part. The 13-inch MacBook Pro is a beautiful, well-designed machine. But shortly before I got it, I got an iMac for my home office, and shortly after I got it, I got an iPad. Between the two, I don’t really find myself using my MBP that much anymore.

Any work I do generally requires ample screen real estate, so I don’t really feel like using the MacBook Pro if I have my iMac and multi-monitor setup available as an option. Add in that most of the places I visit away from home regularly also have at least one large-screen iMac available for use, and the MBP seems less and less useful. Plus, I can usually accomplish with an iPad and a Bluetooth keyboard all the work I would’ve done with a notebook while in transit.

Believe me, I’m as surprised to see this one on this list as you are. I never thought it’d be a purchase I’d come to regret when I originally handed over the cash.

Apple Battery Charger

It’s cute, it’s compatible with Apple’s swappable electrical plugs, and it’s small, but other than that, this really isn’t one of Apple’s best efforts. I find it to be incredibly temperamental (why do I have to unplug and plug in three or four times to get the light to stop blinking orange?) and it only works with AA batteries, not AAA. At least with six batteries included, the price is right, but that’s about the only quantifiable advantage Apple’s offering has over those of traditional battery companies like Duracell et. al.

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Add More Gestures to Your Mac With jitouch 2

Simon Mackie — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 21:00:49 +0000

The multitouch surfaces of the trackpad on Apple’s recent MacBooks and its Magic Mouse are great, especially for browsing and scrolling through documents. But have you ever wished that you could use them to do even more? jitouch 2 is a nifty little app that extends your Mac with a huge range of additional gestures for tasks such as changing browser tabs, closing and minimizing windows, changing Spaces and more. It can also add missing features, such as a middle-button click with the Magic Mouse.

Cleverly, jitouch 2 only adds new gestures; it doesn’t interfere with or replace any of the built-in commands. As well as extending the existing gestures — like making a quick three-finger tap open links in a new browser tab — jitouch 2 also introduces what it calls “Character Gestures,” which enable you to draw characters on the trackpad or Magic Mouse to carry out certain functions; an F opens the Finder, for example.

Here’s a video showing some of jitouch 2′s trackpad gestures in action:

The range of new gestures is extensive, but even though they’re logically designed and intuitive to use, it would take some time to learn them all. However, if you typically use the mouse/trackpad rather than the keyboard that time would be very well spent, because jitouch’s new gestures should provide a considerable productivity boost. I particularly like that it adds to the gestures available on the Magic Mouse, as I’ve always felt that its touch surface wasn’t being used to its full potential.

jitouch 2 works with Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and 10.6 (Snow Leopard). It’s free to try and can be downloaded from the jitouch website, while a license costs a very reasonable $5.99.

Let us know what you think of jitouch 2 in the comments.

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(Via One Thing Well)

Did Apple’s Latest Keyboard Update Make Things Worse?

Liam Cassidy — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:19:35 +0000

Barely a week into the New Year I wrote an article entitled Magic Mouse Drains Keyboard Batteries. The clue is in the title. According to reports on the Apple Support forum, people were discovering that their diminutive Apple wireless keyboards were suddenly chewing through battery life faster than a first generation iPod in 2010. The Magic Mouse was blamed, and naturally, we wailed and gnashed our teeth.

Well, last night, Apple released version 1.1 of the Aluminum Keyboard Firmware via Software Update. And as a man almost ready to buy Energizer shares (anything to try to win back the cost of paying for high-performance batteries every week) its description sounded very promising.

“This firmware update improves battery performance of the 2007 aluminum Apple Wireless Keyboard when used in combination with other bluetooth devices (eg. Magic Mouse, some bluetooth headsets) and addresses an issue with the 2007 aluminum Apple Keyboard and the 2007 aluminum Apple Wireless Keyboard where a key may repeat unexpectedly while typing. The update also addresses other issues.”

Promises Promises; the Aluminum Keyboard Firmware Update

I can’t say I’ve ever experienced the “key repeat” problem but I most certainly have watched in dismay as my keyboard greedily depleted — in record time — every expensive battery I put in the thing. (Remember that scene in My Stepmother is an Alien when Celeste sucks the flashlight batteries dry? Exactly the same.)

Coincidence?

Not unexpectedly, the update required a restart — but that was a trifling inconvenience in return for longer battery life! In fact, it was only a few days ago I put in a fresh set of expensive Lithium batteries and I wasn’t eager to have to buy more any day soon. Imagine my surprise when the following message popped-up.

Shocking! Annoying, too. Prior to the update I could coax 9-14 days out of my batteries. The current batteries have been in for only three days and I’m being told they’re on the way out? Surely that’s no coincidence.

So what’s happening here? Bad batteries? Or could it be that Apple’s update has made things worse?

Mixed Results

I headed back to the Apple Support pages to see what was being said. The experience of other Magic Mouse / Wireless Keyboard owners is so far somewhat mixed. Here’s what Creator2456 reports:

Did the firmware update […] The keyboard also REFUSES to stay powered on after the update. Already tried several batteries so it is not a power problem. The LED will light when I press the power button and then turn off within 5 seconds without pairing or anything.

Conversely, here’s a more ebullient comment from Xorgoo:

It works ! My alu keyboard (3 batteries) is reborn! 1% lost during the night, compare to 10% before.

And then there’s this warning from Freekarrot:

This update won’t work on recent 2-cell AWKs, which are heavily affected by the bug as well. Letting out an update just for one of the affected devices is ridiculous. It means they know what the problem is and how it is solved, but they either don’t know or refuse to acknowledge that ALL AWKs are affected!

Conspiracy theories aside, I really don’t know what to make of this sort of incompatibility. (I’m not sure what else to call it — ‘Not Playing Nicely Together-ness” doesn’t sound very smart; perhaps “malfunction” is better?) I understand Apple doesn’t develop its own Bluetooth drivers (that responsibility is left to Broadcomm, the manufacturers of all Bluetooth radios in Apple’s machines) but even so, for their own equipment to behave in such a flaky, unreliable manner really isn’t the ‘Apple Way’ to which I have become accustomed. It’s all supposed to ‘Just Work’, right?

Think about it; if Microsoft were to build a bluetooth keyboard and mouse that, individually, worked just fine but, together, played very silly games with battery-life, we would be so quick to tut-tut and shake our heads. We would chuckle, too, adding ever-so-smugly (in the manner many Mac-heads are wont to do when commenting on Windows-PC-based problems) “Well, what do you expect from Microsoft?”

Just prior to the Firmware update, the now-very-happy Xorgoo complained;

More Than 100 days, more than 300 posts, and… nothing.
Apple, you have to do something.
And you should at least give us some news.
Do you think time will cure the trouble ? It won’t…

Well, Apple has done something. We now we have an update, but judging from my own initial experience and fresh comments on the Apple support pages, problems remain. Of course, one is a poor sample — my batteries may have already been too far-gone to benefit from the updated firmware. Maybe.

So now it’s over to you. Have you tried updating your firmware? Has it made any sort of difference? Share your findings with me in the comments below. And please… no comments about how we should ditch our Apple keyboards. I don’t care how shiny your Logitech is.

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Tame That Magic Mouse With Either of Two Utilities

James Kendrick — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 19:50:18 +0000

It didn’t take long after I picked up a Magic Mouse for use with my MacBook before great suggestions started pouring in pointing to utilities that make the mouse even more useful. I have spent some time playing with a couple of them, and it does seem like you can take the multitouch capabilities of the Magic Mouse to new levels with either.

The first app I tested was BetterTouchTool, and I found it to be a very powerful tool. It allows total configuration of the Magic Mouse, including swipes, clicks and gestures. There are so many settings I admit it’s a bit daunting to explore, and will require some extended testing to find what works best. This tool also provides configuration over the MacBook trackpad, which some may find useful.

The second tool I tried seems to be a better fit for me. MagicPrefs is written to provide complete control over the Magic Mouse, and makes it possible to configure up to four finger touch events to trigger different things. It can handle taps, clicks, swipes, drags and pinches, which makes for a very personal mouse usage tool.

I would have no qualms using either of these utilities, as they both are very well done. For now I’m sticking with MagicPrefs, as much to try to get it fully customized the way I want it as for any other reason.

While writing this post I had a situation develop that may have had something to do with the mouse utilities. The Magic Mouse lost connection to the MacBook, and nothing could bring it back. Over the course of futzing with that, the MacBook’s trackpad went dead, leaving me with no good way to control things.

I rebooted the MacBook (after saving the draft post), and when it came back up no Bluetooth hardware was detected. I had to do the old Command-Option-P-R trick to get it back. I’m thinking that switching between these two utilities, both of which control the mouse and/or trackpad, that something got confused. It may be that one or both of them don’t cleanly quit when instructed to do so, and perhaps both were fighting over the mouse at the same time.

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Coffee Break: Say Hello to the Magic Mouse

James Kendrick — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 16:30:34 +0000

This is not new technology, but as of a few minutes ago it is new to me. I finally swung by the Apple Store and picked up a Magic Mouse of my very own. It took all of 30 seconds to unpack it and get it paired up to my MacBook. I’ve been using it for all of five minutes but I’m already ready liking the way the multitouch gestures work. I had to enable right-clicking in the preferences (what’s up with that, Apple?), and so far I am just using the default gestures.

One of my concerns was how well the Magic Mouse would work with Firefox, but I needn’t have worried. Scrolling works fine with either one or two fingers, and even the swipe left and right works in Firefox. I’ll have to hold off final judgement as to whether it’s worth the $69 I paid for it, but so far it’s been pretty nice. Before anyone asks, yes, you have to remove it from the plastic case before using it. :)

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Simple Test Confirms Magic Mouse Not So Magical When it Comes to Power

Darrell Etherington — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 21:19:46 +0000

It’s not exactly the most scientific test ever conducted, but a very practical experiment conducted by Softpedia’s Filip Truta reveals that the new Apple Magic Mouse pales next to its predecessor in at least one significant way. That area of weakness is power management, and the new slick interface device could be as much as 40 percent less efficient than the clumsy old Mighty Mouse.

Reports have been flooding in that the new mouse is a power-hungry little guy, both internally among staff here at TheAppleBlog and over at the Apple Discussion boards. At least one discussion thread deals with the problem that the Magic Mouse has when working in conjunction with the Apple Wireless Bluetooth Keyboard. Apparently, using both together will result in significant battery drain in the latter.

On its own, the Magic Mouse is no energy superstar either. Many users report a much shorter battery life than they got with the Bluetooth Mighty Mouse. Truta was finding the same thing with his new pointing device, and so went about testing his theory to see what he found. Rather than timing the life of the batteries during regular continuous usage, as a lab might, Truta came up with an easy to perform exercise that you can try for yourself, too, so long as you’re in possession of both models of Apple mice.

The trick is to use a fresh set of batteries in the Magic Mouse until they run out of steam. Apple’s redesigned the mouse preferences pane to tell you when you need to change them, and even provides instructions on how to do so in case you can’t figure it out for yourself. Once the batteries are depleted, all you have to do is switch them back into your old Mighty Mouse.

Using this very simple method, Truta discovered that while the Magic Mouse saw the batteries as devoid of anymore usable energy, the Mighty Mouse would in fact report that the batteries weren’t even close to empty. In fact, his tests show that under the Bluetooth devices menu it would report as much as 41 percent battery remaining in the supposedly dead batteries. That’s not an insignificant margin by any count.

Battery issues aside, I sill love my Magic Mouse. I should qualify that by noting that I use it as the primary means of control for my home theater Mac mini, which means that I use it quite sparingly. I’m still using the same batteries I put in when I got it, which was almost immediately following its release. And my keyboard doesn’t seem to be running down with any unusual speed, either. But again, I almost never use them really, except to set up a movie or TV show or start a playlist in iTunes. I’m still planning on testing out Filip Truta method when the batteries do eventually run down, though. What are your experiences?

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Magic Mouse Drains Keyboard Batteries

Liam Cassidy — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:00:34 +0000

So the holidays are over. The food portions are returning to healthy sizes but the damage is done. New Year resolutions you’ve been ruminating on for weeks must now be taken seriously. It’s time to get in shape. No more excuses! No more distractions. You have that nice new Mac so you think, “Hey, I’ll type ‘em up and print ‘em out! If they’re pinned up on the wall I can’t possibly fail!”

Only, you might have a problem doing any typing if recent reports prove accurate. It seems the combination of Magic Mouse and Apple Wireless Keyboard are a toxic mix. Over on the Apple Support Discussions forum users are reporting that, since installing their Magic Mouse, their Apple Wireless Keyboards have been guzzling power like there’s no tomorrow.

Brand new, planet-killing alkaline batteries don’t make it through a full week. Tree-hugging rechargeables manage less. Users have been forced to revert to backup mice (mouses?) or switch-out their keyboards for a more traditional, wired variety.

User cbcirrus writes;

Apple Tech Support furnished three replacement aluminum keyboards (unfortunately one DOA and all three were three battery version). All replacement keyboards suffer from the low battery life issue.

They now claim it is a bluetooth driver issue and the engineers are working on a solution, presumably a new driver or patch. One tech said engineering believes the magic mouse bluetooth is interfering with keyboard bluetooth communication and/or sleep mode. No estimate as to time frame for solution just a suggestion to use rechargeable batteries until issue is resolved.

I haven’t been hit by the battery bug described here, but I’ve certainly had my own issues with the Magic Mouse / Wireless Keyboard combo which I suspect may be related. I’ve found that my Apple Wireless Keyboard interferes with my Magic Mouse. I simply can’t have both devices working at the same time in the same room without my Mouse pointer losing the will to live and being reduced to a stuttering, crawling, sorry excuse for a pointer.

Changing wireless channels on my router and Time Capsules made no difference. In the end I had no choice; if I wanted to continue using the Magic Mouse, sans judder, I had to switch keyboards to the wired variety that originally came with the Mac Pro.

About a month ago I found a thread on Apple’s discussion site explaining that — for 2009 Mac Pros — the problem doesn’t lie with the Broadcom bluetooth radio but with its drivers. Unfortunately, Apple isn’t privy to Broadcom’s firmware roadmap and can’t say when an update will arrive.

Oddly, I cannot find that thread now. I suspect that at some point in the intervening weeks it has been edited/removed. If you can find it, please share in the comments below. I mention it here because it sounds awfully similar to the explanation above… perhaps the two issues are connected?

Have you experienced issues with using the Magic Mouse and Apple Wireless Keyboard together?

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Magic Mouse Drivers for Windows Magically Appear

Darrell Etherington — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:13:03 +0000

Apple unveiled its Mighty Mouse replacement, the Magic Mouse, last month alongside new versions of the iMac, Mac mini and entry-level Macbook. The mouse was well-received, perhaps due in part to the disappointment most felt about its predecessor. Better tracking and touch gestures combined to deliver a much better experience overall.

But only for Mac users, since unlike the Mighty Mouse before it, the Magic Mouse didn’t ship with any Windows support, so brand traitors were simply out of luck. Now, a Windows driver for the Magic Mouse has surfaced, so the PC faithful can see what all the buzz is about.

The software release isn’t an official one, so proceed at your own risk. What happened was that someone, via a nice little bit of technical conjuring, freed a 32-bit and 64-bit version of the Magic Mouse driver from Apple’s recent Boot Camp update using an unrar tool. So it’s software, just not officially released software.

The source of the drivers hopefully indicates that Apple is planning on officially releasing support for the the Magic Mouse’s multitouch features somewhere in the near future, so if you’re at all wary about trying these hacked versions out, you may not have long to wait. After all, Windows still accounts for 96 percent of the computing market share, so Apple is foregoing a lot of potential revenue in not offering PC support.

You can grab the drivers from Uneasy Silence, but the link for the 64-bit version is broken as of this writing. The 32-bit version downloads fine, though, as a Windows executable. I haven’t yet had a chance to try this out with my Magic Mouse, but if you have, let us know how it worked out in the comments.

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Web Working Gear: Apple Magic Mouse

Darrell Etherington — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:00:29 +0000

Apple has recently been getting a lot of attention from the online press and tech enthusiasts for something that it really should’ve done a long time ago. The company replaced its standard issue Mighty Mouse with the new Magic Mouse, a completely new design which features touch sensitivity in addition to standard mouse functionality.

It took a while, but I finally found one in stock at an Apple retail store, and I’ve spent the past couple days using it as my primary mouse. How well suited is it to web work? I suppose that depends on your work environment, but it won’t be replacing my usual desktop mouse anytime soon, and I’ll tell you why.

First, let me provide some context. For some time now, I’ve been using the Microsoft Explorer BlueTrack mouse. I have big hands and that device is ergonomically designed to accommodate a larger grip. Also, tracking has never been an issue, nor has connectivity with the included dongle. So it would be fair to say that I’m coming from a rather satisfied position.

That said, I did enjoy my time with the Magic Mouse. I went in with a fair degree of skepticism, since my only previous experience with Mac mice had always been disappointing. I used the Mighty Mouse supplied with my iMac for about three days before mixed up right and left clicks and erratic tracking sent me screaming into the arms of another.

Both right and left click differentiation, and tracking are completely fixed with the new Magic Mouse. A new laser replaces the old optical tracking component, and despite the fact that there’s still a single, unbroken surface for both clicks, Apple’s engineers have improved the device’s guts.

There’s also the matter of the Mighty Mouse’s scroll nub, which used to frequently stop working due to dust and dirt build-up. Now it’s gone completely, replaced by touch scroll functionality. Just drag your finger down the surface of the mouse, around 3/4 of the length of the device, and it scrolls. It works very well, and supports both horizontal and vertical scrolling.

The reasons the Magic Mouse will never become my primary desktop mouse are twofold. For one, it’s too small for comfortable use for extended periods of time, in my opinion. Second, it lacks a third button, which means that I can’t assign Exposé functions to said button. Considering how often I use that feature of OS X in the course of my work, I can never give it up. A recent post at our sister site TheAppleBlog shows I don’t have to, but a simple button click is still much simpler than using that workaround.

If you’ve managed to get hold of a Magic Mouse, let us know what you think of the device below.

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