A more magical mouse
I received a Magic Mouse a few days ago and, at the risk of sounding like the dreaded Mac fanboi, I’m quite smitten with the device. It looks like something from the future that — in some science fiction way — was brought into our time.
But, of course, you can only sit and admire something for so long. So I picked it up and started using it.
I’ve never used a wireless mouse before, so that in itself took some getting used to. Once the novelty wore off a bit, I started to think about some of the criticisms I had read previously about Magic Mouse: tracking is too slow and it doesn’t have as many functions as its predecessor, Mighty Mouse. I felt confident, though, that Mac freeware would provide the solutions.
Tracking: At first it seemed normal, but then I wondered if it could go faster. According to the mouse’s preferences, the answer is no. Tracking is already cranked as high as it will go.
The solution is a third-party preference pane called MouseZoom. When you click on it, you see a slider that can be goosed up to 10 or, as noted, OS X Crazy Fast!!! I decided to go for the max, and I must admit I like it a lot better.
You can also fiddle around with settings in Terminal, although this is apparently just another way of doing what MouseZoom does. CNet has instructions if you prefer to go this route. (It does bug me a little that the MouseZoom pref pane is 32-bit.)
Missing functions: Many people have complained that there is no middle click with Magic Mouse. With Mighty Mouse, the button can be set up so that clicking on it will invoke Exposé or open a link in a new tab, among other things. These are both handy and I can see why they would be missed.
As it turns out there are a couple of freeware solutions, although they are both experimental at this point. MiddleClick was originally designed for MacBook track pads, but it also works for Magic Mouse. Once installed and running, you can give your mouse a light tap with three fingers and — by default — it will open links in a new tab.
But if the mouse can do that, you ask, why not other things you can do with a track pad? It turns out there is much more. SecondBar has created an app called BetterTouchTool that allows you to assign a multitude of functions to various swipes and clicks. For example, I set it up to show Exposé with a three-finger downward swipe and hide the current program with a two-finger upward swipe. Of course, the three-finger tap is also there.
BetterTouchTool is still very much in the preliminary stage, but the developer, Andreas Hegenberg, seems pumped and is putting out new versions almost daily. I look forward to his improvements. I found, for example, that the three-finger tap didn’t work as reliably as it did with MiddleClick. With the swipes, I would have to try a few times before they finally worked.
I’m not complaining, though. If these two apps are any indication, Magic Mouse has a great future ahead of it. More developers will jump in, and no doubt Apple will offer updates of its own.
With the tracking, on the other hand, Apple should move quickly to fulfil the need for speed demanded by many of its customers. We shouldn’t have to resort to the inelegance of MouseZoom or Terminal twiddling.
Update: MouseWizard is $2.50 shareware that, among other things, allows you to put your Mac to sleep by covering Magic Mouse with your hand.
Posted Thursday, November 12, 2009 in How-to
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