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Comment by mumblerino | Hacker News Reader

> it's clearly targeted towards users who don't use their mouse for long periods of time or for graphical work.

Speak for yourself. The Magic Mouse fits my hand exactly the way I use it, which means it doesn’t “fit” it.

Before it, I had a thick Logitech that was perfectly molded to be held; Too bad that my hand never actually fully touched it because I move the mouse with my fingers alone while the wrist mostly stays still.

I don’t know any professionals who consciously slide the wrist across the table, moving anything more than the fingers.

—

Apple mice seem universally hated, and I’m not trying to change anybody’s mind, but I’ve held the same exact mouse since 2009 for daily work and I wouldn’t replace it (except for gaming, which I no longer do)

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I know a couple of people who suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome - and from what I understand moving your wrist is one of the things you're supposed to do to avoid injuring your tendons - anchoring your wrist and moving your mouse solely with your fingers should be avoided.

In fact, the Magic Mouse seems to be almost antithetical to everything I've been taught about mouse ergnomics

I think you have it backwards. Ergonomic mouse-pads have a big silicone pillow to rest your wrist on while you move your mouse with fingers only. Switching to such a mouse-pad is how my wife got rid of CTS.

For another point of comparison, what works for me is what the OP said is the worst, just moving the mouse with my finger tips. I also tried the mouse pads you mentioned, and they caused the most issues as they put pressure directly on my wrist. What I do is...

I line up the armrest of my chair with the top of the desk so they're a level surface. I adjust the height of my chair so my arm is at a 90 degree angle. My arm runs flat across the arm rest and the desk, and my palm sits on the flat mouse pad. Then, I just move my finger tips to flick the mouse 1cm in any direction for getting to different sides of the screen.

For keyboards it's similar. I use a thin and flat keyboard. This way my elbow (on the armrest), forearm, palm, and finger tips are all in a straight line. If I add any type of wrist rest, then the weight all goes to the wrist instead of being distributed.

Lastly, I dislike keyboards and laptops that raise the backside because they raise my finger tips and put pressure on my wrist. It feels much more natural for the fingers to be lower or equal to the wrist and palm.

Anyway, just my experience. I had some discomfort for a few years, and then nothing for the past decade.

I agree on the topic of mouse pads - What they're supposed to do is stop you from bending your wrist, but like you said, you end up with pressure on the very part you're trying to avoid.

Did you ever get a chance to try a vertical ergonomic mouse? They take a while to get used to, but the idea is that you don't rotate your wrist (i.e your ulna and radius remain parallel) and keep it in a more neutral orientation.

Oh, I never did try a vertical mouse. I remember seeing them for years but I never had a chance to spend time with one. It does seem like a much more natural hand position though.

Fire me, it's a bit of a chore to mostly grip (apply forces in two ways with one hand) a vertical mouse for full fine control (rather than a regular mostly "push down"/hand rest grip).

Seems like putting force on your wrist is precisely what you should not do (whether weight or flex). Note that pianists are typically taught to keep the wrist/hand flat and rarely suffer CTS (Glenn Gould and Bernie Greenberg are notable and sad exceptions).

Theoretically the best wrist “rest” in this scenario would be a bed of sharp nails..

it's good to hear that your wife got rid of CTS, but generally the problem in the carpal area is one of pressure -- there is a bundle of nerves, tendons, blood vessels, etc., that go through the wrist. It's common for compression to cause problems. My wrist doctor advised me to avoid any pressure at all, because you can feel comfortable (e.g. with a pillowy surface) while still doing damage.

The wrist pad helps if the mouse is too large or the grip would force the holder's hand at an awkward angle.

If your palm lays flat on the desk and your wrist is at an upward angle, that'll hurt your tendons pretty fast and affect your fingers and wrist. The wrist pad doesn't help a lot though because if you move the mouse with your fingers you'll have to grip the mouse more tightly rather than just rwst your hand on it and move it around by moving your forearm.

Ideally your hand would be slightly rotated so that your pinky is closer to the desk and your thumb higher up and if you need something to elevate your hand, then the pad would be closer to your elbow so that you can use your forearm.

We should keep in mind that ergonomic recommendations are for an average target at best, and won’t match a range of people’s use.

Those people injured their tendons and now cover it with their wrist, other people will have other issues, with other workarounds.

>We should keep in mind that ergonomic recommendations are for an average target at best

If you mean regarding to heights, distances, etc, yes.

Else, Err, not really. Anatomy is anatomy, people don't have different design of hands, wrists, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmaris_longus_muscle

"It is absent in about 14 percent of the population"

People have different uses of their hands, wrists, different muscles and predispositions. For me personally the bottleneck was my finger’s middle joint, from too much mouse wheeling.

Even for the targeted morphology, if you exactly stick to the recommended posture and input device etc. for 8h a day whole week, you will have issues anyway, it will just be a matter of what hurts first.

The consensus as far as I know is to rotate posture (e.g. sitting/standing), input devices if possible, and try to avoid repetitive actions on always the same body parts.

When I got a magic mouse I really tried to get used to it, because it looks so pretty, but RSI forced me to go back to logitech.

The basic problem of the mouse is the touch surface. In order to allow for gestures the whole top of the mouse is interactive and the smallest touch sets it off. As a result you have to hover your fingers over the surface instead of resting the hand. In theory you can rest the back half of the hand, but in practice for me that causes accidental clicks because the whole body clicks down. The way to move the mouse is with a pincer grip. The combination of pincer and tense back of the hand by hovering the fingers is tiring and induces RSI. There is no way to keep the multitouch gestures and make the mouse ergonomic. Its strength is its weakness. Some people aren’t sensitive to RSI, for them it is fine. For me it was not.

I use a logitech mouse with extra buttons. All the gestures are replaced by buttons. It works well, and I can hold it in a natural way. But it doesn’t look as nice.

I use a magic trackpad and a logitech g502 myself. While I do like the idea of moving a mouse around with my fingers, I have small hands and found the magic mouse way too dang heavy for such use lol. Something like those little logitechs tends to work better, but they lack the extra buttons I like.

It's actually kinda comical looking at the wear patterns on my >5 year old G502. My thumb can't even reach the 'trigger button' lmao.

I really don't like the giant battleship mice either. But yea, i find the magic mouse way too heavy, a bit too wide, and way too long. The only way I can maneuver that thing is by hovering my hand above it lol.

I also hate the way you have to put it on its side to charge it. Who thought that up?

The trackpad is fantastic! But it doesn't work at all in Windows, so I don't get to use it as much as I'd like to. I also find that it doesn't seem to use the same palm rejection technique the laptop one does ,so I can't always have it in front of my keyboard.

If you just use your fingers, have you ever considered a trackball? I’ve used them since I started experiencing a little wrist pain 12 years ago, and I thankfully haven’t experienced it since.

My favorites include Logitech’s series (MX Ergo wireless trackball, the version available only at Best Buy), and some new ones out of Japan by Elecom. Elecom’s are available on Amazon in a few different sizes - I bought two and returned one that didn’t feel good.

And the beat one I ever used is Microsoft’s Trackball Explorer, but that’s been discontinued for years, and fetched quite a price even used. Some of Elecom’s seem to emulate the ergonomics of that to a degree though, which is why I recommend them.

I use Kensington's Slimblade Trackball which is excellently designed and works (for me) as a natural extension of my hand and fingers. I highly recommend it. (Be advised, the software was excellent but is now in a period of transition post-Catalina.)

I looked up Elecom's "trackball" offerings but only see trackball mice. Such designs reduce the trackball to something that can be manipulated only with a thumb rather than two fingers (index and middle). Such designs are unappealing and too restrictive to me.

> Such designs reduce the trackball to something that can be manipulated only with a thumb rather than two fingers (index and middle). Such designs are unappealing and too restrictive to me.

Interesting. Does that mean that with the kind of trackball you describe you'd have to move your whole wrist to move the ball left and right? I find I have very little lateral mobility in my index finger and practically none in my middle. Isn't that tiring after a while?

I often use an MX Ergo (which is a "trackball mouse" — thumb operated — and is my only trackball experience) and what I like about it is that my wrist can have a fairly natural position and I don't have to move it around or hold it suspended.

> Does that mean that with the kind of trackball you describe you'd have to move your whole wrist to move the ball left and right?

The trackball is fairly large, about 5.5 centimeters in diameter. So I personally use mostly finger movements with slight flicks of the wrist. However, the ball is so large one could keep one’s wrist rigid and use both shoulder and elbow to move it.

It really is a very comfortable device.

They do have index finger models, probably not on Amazon US and not yet as perfect as Slimblade

I tried to switch to the MX Ergo for a few weeks, and while it was ok, every time I tried that mouse again I'd just be way faster. Do you think you reached speed parity with the mouse?

Is this what you mean?

https://www.elecom.co.jp/products/M-HT1DRBK.html

Or maybe this?

https://www.elecom.co.jp/products/M-DPT1MRBK.html

I supposed you're a life long Mac user who does NOT use right click often?

By default, Solid modelling apps (many of which do not even exist for Mac) make heavy use of right click. In blender you select the target of manipulation by right clicking.

Then, I obviously left out just doing normal context menu which requires right click.

In magic mouse, if you need to enable right click you need to spend most of the time with right click finger raised. Everyone I know who learned to use right click in non-mac systems have complained about the magic mouse precisely for this problem. All move on to use touchpads (superb in Mac world) or some logitech or Microsoft mouse.

Last time I used a Magic Mouse (the first version I think) it also wasn't possible to simultaneously right & left click, which caused problems in some games and a 3d modeling software I was using.

I've been using the Magic Mouse since it was released and I have never experienced this - you can rest your fingers on the right side of the mouse and it doesn't "right click" without you clicking. Outside of having to turn it off to charge it, the Magic Mouse is my favorite mouse I've ever used.

The right click does require you to lift your index, but the opposite isn’t true.

Like for gaming, there are some uses where the Magic Mouse performs poorly: For example when you have to click both left and right buttons at the same time (impossible with MM) or if you need more buttons (I dearly missed my middle click at first, but the gestures and minute scrolling made up for it)

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