Apple’s Magic Mouse is the first offering from Apple to mate the capabilities of a Multi-Touch surface with a movable mouse. The result may be the best mouse Apple has ever made or the worst, depending on your expectations. The Magic Mouse has good points and bad points, but it has great potential, especially if Apple makes a few minor changes to future releases of the mouse software.
Apple Magic Mouse: Introduction
The Magic Mouse is the first Multi-Touch mouse to make its way out of labs and into the hands of the general public. Its lineage can be found in Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch, which introduced a touch-based interface that can detect multiple contact points as well as interpret gestures, such as swiping, to move between pages of information, or the pinch, to zoom in or out.
Multi-Touch next made an appearance in Apple’s MacBook and MacBook Pro, in the form of a glass trackpad that can understand one- and two-finger gestures. The Multi-Touch trackpad makes it easy and fun to navigate a portable’s desktop and applications.
Apple then used Multi-Touch technology to create a mouse that has the same capabilities as most standard mice, in a package that delivers an entirely different user experience.
The Magic Mouse is wireless, and uses a Bluetooth 2.1 transceiver to communicate with Bluetooth-enabled Macs.
