Why Apple mice suck, and what they could do to fix it. | Hacker News Reader

Why Apple mice suck, and what they could do to fix it.

troysimpson.co

31 pointsmrtron67 comments

There mice may suck but I am in love with the multi-touch track pad. I don't use a mouse at all anymore. For me at least they have killed the mouse.

The 2 finger slide to scroll, 3 finger slid to page up / down, 2 finger right click make it an amazing tool. My productivity has skyrocketed on the track-pad. They have now released a peripheral track-pad for desktop machines. I recommended to a friend of mine that I freelance with and he was sold almost instantly. It is night and day.

Anyway, the point is I agree mice may be the one area where I prefer Microsoft's offerings to Apple's. I have never met an Apple mouse that I liked, but for me the mouse is dead I could never go back after using the track-pad.

Link for those of you unfamiliar with it:

http://www.apple.com/magictrackpad/

Same here. I have despised trackpads on all windows pc's I've owned over the years. I always carried around a little wireless laptop mouse for use away from my desk. When I switched to Mac at work, I realized I never had the urge to use a mouse while away from my desk. That's when I started paying attention to how good the trackpad really is. Even when I work from home for an entire day, I don't connect a mouse.

I wonder how long it will be before Apple stops making mice entirely and switches completely to touch-based input. I suspect that time is not far away.

This is pretty interesting, my own personal experience with trackpads on laptops have been quite poor. Not the quality of the trackpad itself just it being highly annoying having to move the mouse around with one, i always like to plug in an external mouse.

One of the main things i dislike is it not naturally being on my right, obviously all laptop makers couldnt do this because of the lefties of the world. The other issue is the actual size of the trackpad on a laptop, its too small, again, not easily fixable on a laptop.

So i suppose the external trackpad would solve both these problems, but until i try it out, i'm not sure if i'd like it or not. Certainly interesting though.

You say "on a laptop" in the general sense, leading me to wonder if you've tried Mac trackpads recently. I used to feel just like you do, but Apple's trackpads honestly are vastly superior products to any others that I've used.

I know this sounds like fanboyism, but that's just been my experience. FWIW, I agree completely that Apple's actual mice are awful.

Apple's trackpad is vastly different from a traditional trackpad. It is a multi-touch device similar to the iphone but without the display. There are no buttons the whole thing is a button. You swipe two fingers to scroll up/down click the pad to click. 2 finger click to right click, the list goes on. The point being, it is nothing like a traditional trackpad experience and for me personally it is superior to a mouse. If I used a desktop, I would use the peripheral trackpad no doubt, I could no go back to a mouse now.

Another poster mentioned above that they slowly realized that they stopped using their mouse, that is what happened to me as well. One day I realized that I just never pulled my mouse out of my bag anymore.

I really think Apple has done a poor job of marketing this one, as I think most that have used it would agree, it is a mouse killer.

I do 3D work as a hobby from my old simulation days, and now days I use Blender, the pan, room, rotate is so natural with a trackpad it is unbelievable. And for Photoshop it is a huge productivity booster.

It is also nice in an IDE where I spend most of my time because you can navigate select and modify all in single hand stroke. If they ever add gestures for copy / paste I won't know what to do with myself.

The Magic Trackpad + BetterTouchTool is a great combination.

I absolutely love the 3-finger drag. Use it all the time. With BetterTouchTool I now have 3-finger clicks for middle-clicks, and 4-finger swipes for Spaces. Tons more gestures are possible, but this is enough for my purposes.

Having the touchpad off to the side rather than in front of the keyboard makes all the difference in the world. I quickly found myself more productive on it, then on my venerable Kensington Expertmouse trackball (which is now reserved for games).

I did not know about BetterTouchTool, wow thanks a lot for cluing me into that one. Just when I thought it could not get any better.

The one that was killing me was not being able to set gestures because I would love to have copy / past. I can have it now.

> Apple mice seem to be the canary in the coal mine. If Apple starts designing mice we all want to use - it is a sign their engineering practices have turned upside down and their products will not have the same minimalistic qualities that make them incredibly popular.

Apple mice suck. Period. They're practically unusable, poorly tested, unreliable, overly expensive garbage. Problems with their pointer devices are noticeable to anybody withing the first 5 minutes of using the device. To make matters worse, the way mouse inputs are handled is similarly bad. Unusable and unpredictable acceleration curve with no exposed configuration to tune it, and decades of trying everything possible to avoid having a second button has created all kinds of nonstandard ways of handling right mouse clicks and all kinds of legacy keyboard gyrations for simple actions that could just be handled through a right-click context menu. Option-Shift-Command-Delete really, so I'm modifying a modification or a modifier key? Wow, that's totally discoverable. The semantics of such a command astound. (it's slowly improving, but right-click context menus are not really in the Apple culture).

It's bizarre because Apple is really the first company to design their devices around non-keyboard input, even going to far as to remove arrow keys off of the keyboard in early devices to force people to use the mouse, their touch devices have reinvented mobile computing, and their interface standards are extremely high, why is it then that the mouse I had with my original single body black and white Macintosh is more usable than anything the company has produced since the ridiculous hockey puck mouse in the 90s? Does nobody in the company actually use their products? Is everybody just walking around with MBPs using the trackpads?

One lesson to be learned though is that there simply is a certain amount of complexity you have to deal with in modern computing. You can shift that complexity around (eliminate the right mouse button, but then you have to have awkward and non-discoverable four key combinations), but it's very hard to eliminate it. Trying to find the optimal balance point that allows the best possible management of this complexity is hard.

Ctrl + click is the only combination needed for right clicking. This provides a context menu in most situations. This has worked for as long as I can remember. Two button mice have also worked for a long time. The newest Apple mouse has two "buttons" in fact, but this functionality is not enabled by default.

I can't use a mouse on a Mac for extended periods of time due to the mouse acceleration curve problem. I've never experienced them as unreliable or garbage, but I just don't like using them.

Using synergy and an external Linux PC to drive the mouse solves the problem. But I like the Mac touchpads so much that the mouse problem sort of disappears, especially now with the new external touchpad. Now, I find even using a mouse (or touchpad) on other Windows / Linux computers is slightly annoying.

It's not even a matter of preference, or just needing to use it to get used to it. It's like trying to drive a car where the steering wheel is covered in different grades of molasses and motor oil. It's actually physically tiring fighting the curve trying to just point to things on the screen. After 30 minutes my entire arm aches. I thought for a while it was the particular mouse I was using, I must have gone through $200 in mice and pointing devices trying to find something that worked better until I stumbled upon some arcane command line command to just turn it off.

Completely non-discoverable, some of the worst physical input design I've seen since the Nintendo Virtual Boy. I really don't understand it either, I don't remember having nearly this consternation pre-OSX

The acceleration curve makes so much sense to me, for some reason it feels right. Whereas I hate using Windows or Linux because it doesn't have the same sort of curve.

The touch-pads are extremely nice though. I have used Mac's since 2001 beginning with an iBook and since then find it difficult to use a mousing surface on other manufacturers laptops. It just doesn't have the same smooth feel, there is more resistance or it doesn't correctly pick up on my motions, the surface Apple uses to cover their touch pads is something special and different.

The acceleration curve came directly from NeXT (traditional Mac OS had a more similar curve to Win/Linux). So my best guess is that Steve Jobs also likes this acceleration curve ;)

The acceleration is easily disabled. Just run this command in terminal.

defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.mouse.scaling -1

I wouldn't call the secret preferences macs have easily disabled. The vast majority of users encountering this problem won't be able to take advantage of this!

True it's not the easiest to do manually but there are plenty of preference panes that can open up this feature if you are motivated enough to fix it.

The problem is that I don't want to disable the acceleration entirely, I just want a _different_ acceleration curve: http://db.tidbits.com/article/8893

I'm not sure if this command will help with that.

But in any case, I'm sold on the trackpad now, and I'm not going back. :)

> Is everybody just walking around with MBPs using the trackpads?

I wouldn't be surprised. My hatred of Apple mice is about equal to my love of their trackpads :)

I really like the trackpad for scrolling while coding or going through forums. Any situation I don't want my hands to leave the keyboard area but I need to scroll. I usually do a combination of hotkeys like the spacebar in a browser and using the trackpad.

Which is interesting (I agree with your general sentiment BTW, a big responsive trackpad is nice) since for many years, Apple went through all kinds of exercises to try and get users off of the keyboard and slow the interface input down. Other than typing, I almost never remember using the keyboard on my pre-PPC macs. Now they are emphasizing the keyboard (and near keyboard input devices) as the way to go.

I actually dislike the trackpad for precision work, but do like it for broad gestures like scrolling.

Neither would I. I love my MacBook's trackpad. The first few times I used the computer, I plugged in a mouse, and then realised I wasn't even using it because the trackpad was so easy and convenient.

Now, that's not just the hardware--- OS X's single-button usability makes a huge impact here. When I have to boot Windows for SolidWorks or Matlab (or pretty much anything else), it's basically unusable without also plugging in a mouse.

His rant about the magic mouse are unfair. He's making claims about it that sound like he hasn't even used it.

> The most innovative mouse in recent history - the top is a touchpad. The problem is it is difficult to hold the mouse and perform the two finger scrolling necessary. Clicking doesn't give you the feedback you would like and again there really is only 2 buttons available (left and right). It is difficult to use a touchpad on a device intended to slide around your table, and tough to click a mouse on a touchpad.

You don't need two fingers to scroll. One is sufficient. Clicking is an audible and you can very well feel it with your finger. It's not a touchpad nor is it intended to be used as a touchpad. It's just that instead of scrolling using a tiny nudge on the top you can use way more surface (anywhere in the top 2/3 of the mouse) to scroll in any direction you want.

Be that as it may, it's still not, in my experience, a good mouse. Nifty idea, cool looking design, but I found the ergonomics of it really uncomfortable. It's just awkward trying to move the thing around at all compared to other mice, and the "2 buttons masquerading as 1" thing remains an unpredictable annoyance. I've wished for a long time now that Apple would just give up, admit their mistake, and accept that 2 button mice are the superior option.

> I've wished for a long time now that Apple would just give up, admit their mistake, and accept that 2 button mice are the superior option.

The number of revisions on mice that Apple has produced that actually are multi-button mouse, obfuscated under a pseudo-one-button form factor is simply mind-boggling. Just put a second stupid button on the darn thing. I used to do a lot of work with some pre-press design bureaus that were all mac shops. Without fail, every single one of their Macs had either a logitech mouse or a microsoft mouse hooked up to them. When I asked them about it they just said that whenever they bought a new machine they just tossed out whatever Apple had packaged and replaced it with one of those two mice vendors as company policy.

I like my 3 button mouse. At least how the third button is used in X.

Dunno why you were downvoted, my fault for not clarifying: I just meant 2 buttons is superior to 1. I make no claims about other button counts.

I agree. And for some users three buttons is even better than two.

Some people (Gamers, CAD engineers) wouldn't even consider a mouse with less than 4 buttons.

I am both a gamer and a CAD user. I love my magicmouse though as I spend a lot of time using the internet and scrolling on the magicmouse is amazing. I have jitouch + magicprefs to enable tap/swipe gestures and middle mouse button. if I need to do some hard core gaming I will just use a different mouse. Gaming with the mm is actually good enough for government work most of the time.

I have actually used each of the mice I mentioned - let me give you some feedback.

I was referring to the advanced gestures which is not a fair comparison to simple scrolling. But even simple one finger scrolling I struggled with - it could just be my hands in particular.

The entire frame clicking that they have had on various mice including the Magic Mouse just doesn't have the same clicky-ness as an average Logitech or Microsoft mouse.

It is marketed by a touchpad - they refer to it as a multi touch device "The world’s first Multi-Touch mouse". That is the same thing they call their touchpad - "The largest Multi-Touch trackpad ever."

You should have just written that in the first place, then. You made it sound as though you need two fingers in order to scroll, that it doesn't provide any feedback when you click, and that there are only two buttons. In fact, there is only one button, but multiple gestures that serve as additional buttons, and if your beef with the mouse was that it's difficult to pull these gestures off, that'd be one thing. But to say it only has two buttons is inaccurate and none of them provide feedback is entirely misleading.

Combine the Magic Mouse with Better Touch Tool (http://blog.boastr.net/) and you have yourself one killer mouse. I wouldn't give it up for any mouse in the world.

BTW, including a picture of an iMac's mouse plugged into a Macbook into this post was also misleading - the cord is intentionally short because it was intended to plug into the iMac's keyboard, not be an all-purpose peripheral.

I was just ranting about my struggles with Apple mice - I don't feel it is misleading or inaccurate.

The image had been passed around earlier this week - I clearly state it is "An unfair image because the mouse is made to be used with a keyboard with a usb port on the left and right side, but a valid point."

How can a point be both unfair and valid? And I have no problem with people ranting about stuff, as long as they do their due diligence.

Unfair given the lack of context.

Valid because a mouse should be portable to any computer, especially made from the same company.

Do you use and like it, then?

I switched from a 3 button mouse to a magic mouse after using my wife's magic mouse. At first I thought it was weird, but after an hour or so I ordered myself one.

The biggest improvement is in scrolling. Momentum scrolling is addictive and useful.

I have used, extensively, every single mouse Apple has ever released. Including the very first mouse for the Lisa and original Macintosh. Every single last one of them is terrible. Some were so terrible it boggles the mind (the hockey puck, shudder). Before the optical mouse, it always amazed me that Apple mice tended to gum up and get clogged far more than any other brand.

When Microsoft first released their first optical mouse (was it the very first optical mouse? I don't know, but it was the first one I knew of. This was about '98 or so) I eagerly paid the $80 for the behemoth (the thing was huge). Not having to deal with an Apple mouse getting clogged all the time alone made this mouse worth it, nevermind actually having more than one button.

People always point out the magic mouse. I hate it just as much as any other Apple mouse. I have a magic mouse about 2 feet from me as I type this. It seems like Apple can never get everything right. The Magic Mouse is fine on the top side of it, but the bottom has so much friction that moving it around on the desk is a stuttery, frustrating chore.

Interestingly, I've always found Microsoft makes the best mice. My current favorite is the Arc, which is meant to be a travel mouse, yet I use it as my daily mouse. The whole "Apple can do everything right except mice" and "Microsoft often gets things wrong, except their mice" thing has always boggled my mind :)

Microsoft makes my favourite mouse which is the Laser Mouse 6000. When I heard that they would no longer be in production I bought a second one as backup in case my first ever failed. It is light, has two extra buttons one on each side and is an absolute joy to have.

Yes, it looks weird next to the rest of my Apple gear, especially since it is this silver black, but overall it is way better than any mouse Apple has ever released.

The Arc was the last mouse I owned and I loved it, it was probably the most comfortable and usable mouse I have used. As I have noted in other post on this topic I stopped using it for the magic trackpad. Anyway I would have to agree the mouse is definitely an area where Microsoft produces some of he best products in the industry, out of all the Microsoft mice I have ever used the Arc was head and tails above them.

You can take my Magic Mouse when you pry it from my cold dead hand.

That said, regarding the geek fascination with multi-button mics - IMO Apple got it right with one-button (and pseudo-one button like the Magic Mouse & Might Mouse) mice. Yes, you guys/gals can handle multi-button mice. I can handle multi-button mice. But I've witnessed far too many people (even today!) who have a hard time distinguishing between right/lift clicking. Add to that the propensity of many Windows-software authors to provide options that can only be accessed via right-click (some Mac software does this also, but IME much less than Windows software) and you have a recipe for confusion.

Provide one-button mics for everyone and allow advanced users to upgrade to multi-button mice (which is what the Magic/Mighty mice do without having to buy additional hardware) is a good compromise IMO.

I agree with this. The turning point for me was when I first taught my Mom how to use a computer. Two buttons on the mouse was probably her biggest hurdle.

Have you tried Better Touch Tool (http://blog.boastr.net/)? If not, you really should.

An alternate that I like is magicprefs for the middle mouse button click and coupled with jitouch for the tap and swipe gestures. I LOVE IT!

Dammit! I tried magicprefs and the first thing it did was change the mouse acceleration curve to something more Windows-like.

Into the trash it goes...

Apple disabled mucking around with the acceleration curves if I recall correctly. The only thing that they do that is different than the normal mouse prefs is allow you to change the speed of the mouse to a super fast rate which minimizes the effect of the acceleration curve. Try slowing the mouse pointer speed down and see if it is normal.

I played around with it a bit and couldn't find a tracking speed that I was comfortable with. I also remember that (supposedly) Apple removed the acceleration curve API but some sites (including http://osxdaily.com/2010/08/25/mouse-acceleration/) seem to suggest that it can be turned off.

At this point I'm not going to waste the time to figure it out.

fair enough. you should do the jitouch thing though as that is such a win for gestures I was looking for this exact thing. If it did the middle mouse click it would be all that I need.

The fact that it disables itself sometimes after waking the computer up from sleep drives me crazy though. I wish the jitouch people would fix this.

The sad thing is that logitech doesn't make the MX Revolution anymore -- the replacement model is the Performance MX, with less functionality. My MX Revolution got drowned in water and though the Performance MX is still a really good mouse, it's a noticeable downgrade. You can still buy the Revolution online but it comes with a $20-50 markup since it's not being made anymore.

Take a look at the Razer Deathadder. Comes in lefty and righty versions, looks pretty clean, and performs very well with great feedback.

http://store.razerzone.com/store/razerusa/en_GB/DisplayCateg...

Don't let the lights put you off (in the rollerball and under the hand), you can turn them off.

What I love about that mouse... feel, sensitivity, drivers for mac as well as windows, instant-change sensitivity, tactile feedback is lovely, buttons where you expect there to be buttons (but no more... there aren't buttons all over the thing).

I'd say mostly accurate up until the Magic Mouse which I own two of. Really the only bad things about these mice are a) the astoundingly stupid name, b) the poor battery-life (which is exasperated by the fact that apple claims it's exception).

In both cases it's a moot point; the name, yeah I can laugh at it and make fun of it, but really it makes no difference in the usability of the product; and the battery life issue, while annoying, is easily managed by having 2 sets of rechargeable batteries - pretty much a requirement with any wireless mouse.

Other than those two fairly insignificant issues, this is a great mouse and I can't imagine using anything else right now.

Poor battery life? My Magic Mouse would last 3 weeks of constant use with NiMH batteries on average.

However, this was only the case after I applied the software update for my aluminum bluetooth keyboard. The first few weeks with the mouse would get me only a few days worth of use, at best.

Maybe there's another bluetooth device nearby that's causing your Magic Mouse to work too hard, and suck up too much juice?

(Note: I don't use my Magic Mouse anymore because I've since fallen in love with the Magic Trackpad, which has survived even the most precise work with Photoshop for mocking up pixel-accurate UIs.)

Interest and thanks - maybe I have something going on there, I'll investigate.

I'm also comparing it to my old bluetooth mouse (a small laptop mouse by MS), and I only changed the AAA's in that maybe twice a year. Seems odd to me that a device running 2 AA's would need replacing twice as often.

I think I have the same mouse - GREAT device.

3 weeks with NiMH batteries isn't a good counterexample.

I use a Microsoft bluetooth mouse (the best bluetooth mouse I have ever found) and the batteries last about a few months with heavy daily use. It takes 2 AAA batteries.

If the author had wrote this article pre-Magic Mouse, pre-Magic Trackpad, I would have fully agreed but both of those devices are quite good. I don't find gestures on either one to be difficult but of course there's a small learning curve if you've got 20 years of muscle memory on a regular mouse. For the MM and MT there is a solid physical button click and with various utilities you can configure more than 2 buttons. On my MT I have actions setup for 3 finger click and 4 finger click. It really comes down to personal preference. I'm not sure anyone can make one mouse that is perfect for everyone.

I may be sometimes an Apple fanboy, but it's true that Apple mouse sucks, and hard.

Luckily the magic trackpad is now my input device of choice, but I spent a to much time cleaning the small ball of my mighty mouse (without opening it): [http://www.brendanfenn.com/cleanmouse.html]

And then again, if I have to use a three button mouse I've to choose a better mouse, something like a Logitec or, argh, Microsoft mouse. Both of them are cheaper and better than any Apple one.

The Magic mouse was the one big disappointment when I moved to the iMac. Far, far too small to grip comfortably... but I do love the trackpad scrolling.

I wish I could get a "magic" logitech (thumb) trackball. I saw yesterday that Logitech are releasing a new version of the trackman wheel which I bought 7yrs ago and now use with my iMac. Unfortuntely, it looks like the only difference is a blue ball instead of a red one

I have used all previous versions of the mac mice(previous to the magic mouse) and they are all terrible.

That being said , I'm not sure if the author has used a Magic Mouse or not, but I love mine. Sure it doesn't have a million buttons or anything, but in my experience it works great for things I do at my computer(Write Software, surf the internet).

I have a Logitech MX Revolution. Initially I was very pleased with the feel of the scrollwheel. And then a year passed, and it became inconsistent; not in the smoothness but in the mechanism's ability to detect motion. I'm not alone in this complaint, it seems to be a relatively common defect.

The worst part of that mouse, though, is that it requires a special USB transmitter. Originally it was quite long, but subsequent versions have reduced the size. No matter, though, because the range is still terrible on the RF transmission. If you have a big, roomy desk (or keep the transmitter on a KVM off to the side), then you're going to frequently run into the mouse pointer freezing as the mouse and transmitter re-establish a correction. Unless it has line of sight, it will happen. I found it maddening, and had to stop using the device.

Oh, it's also obvious that he never used a 2009-style Apple “Magic” Mouse. It does click, it is way better than the Mighty when it comes to detecting a right click, and the scroll and expose gestures are fantastic. I wish he had never covered it rather than blatantly and transparently lie to us like this.

I've had my MX Revolution for over a year without experiencing the problems you describe. While I'll admit that I've never been the biggest fan of the locking/unlocking of the scroll wheel, it's never had an issue detecting motion. Also, the fact that it requires a transmitter is a bit annoying, but I've never run into an issue where it stops working or goes out of range, line of sight or no.

I've actually had all the mice listed in the article and I still keep coming back to my MX Revolution. The problem is that none of them are two-button mice that I can rest my hand on. The older mice simply did not support right-click functionality, and the newer mice require that your left finder can't be on the mouse while performing a right-click.

One note about their recommended mouse, although i think logitech make excellent products, he writer seems to think the abundance of buttons is a good thing, i do not.

Personally i find the forward and back buttons on a mouse to be highly irritating, whenever i use a mouse with them i always accidentally press them.

Forward and backward buttons can actually be extremely handy, when not used for that purpose.

If you map them to something else (say... modifier keys), you can do all sorts of useful things. Like hold down one of the buttons and click on files to select more than one. Or activate Spaces if you click the middle button, but activate Expose if you click the middle button while holding the back button down.

If back/forward buttons had to stay back/forward buttons I'd agree that they are pointless. They don't though; they can be super useful.

The last Apple mouse I used prior to the Magic Mouse was the clear single button thing. Until now, I don't think anyone took the apple mouse serious. You've already spent $1000+ for the Mac so paying $50 more for a proper mouse wasn't a big deal.

Since getting this thing it's been great. Once you install better mouse or magic menus the versatility really takes off. Forget 1,2, or even 10 button mice. I have configured 12 different gestures I could do more but they get hard to remember. While the hump could be higher the weight is perfect, and it feels solid.

Due to so many comments in this discussion I'm even contemplating getting the touchpad now.

If you're thinking about mice, apple mice are not for you. Apple know damned well that geeks who want lots of buttons will go out and buy a Logitech. They have tested the acceleration curve to destruction and know that it results in faster navigation; They also know that if you know that it exists and are annoyed by it, you are nerdy enough to use USB Overdrive.

To call Apple mice lousy is to completely miss the point. I really like the basic set of hardware buttons that an Android handset requires for navigation, but my mum can never remember which one does what. The iPhone has one button that does one thing.

The average user is not like us. Our biggest failing as developers and designers is when we forget that.

It's not just the curve. It's the usability and reliability of the things. The hockey puck mouse was noticeably unusable within seconds of putting it in your hand. Pretty much the first time you tried to move it, or click, and the mouse had rotated to some indeterminate angle...it's like it went directly from the designer's drawing into production with absolutely no use-testing.

The Mighty Mouse is likewise an unreliable piece of garbage, yet with no way of fixing its primary, and easily noticeable problem, the clogged ball. It's like the purpose for the entire transition from balled mice to optical mice was never a lesson Apple learned. And again, this is noticeable within a very short time-frame under use-testing. And this was a $50 piece of hardware!

Magic mouse is decent. Only problem is it drains batteries like crazy. Plus side is no sleep time.

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