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Comment by xutopia | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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 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'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 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.

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