While I was sitting on the toilet, where all great ideas are born, I thought whether or not I should write a post about my experience with the Apple Magic Mouse I purchased over a year ago... as you can see... I thought it might not be such a bad idea.
Everyone knows I'm not the biggest Apple-Fan but I like some of their innovations (yeah, they really do that sometimes!). I had a
Shuttle K45 Hackintosh running and had way too much money so I thought about the next best thing where I could burn my money. Luckily the 80€ (110$) Magic Mouse was released and due to my naive nature I thought "Huh, someone will surely reverse-engineer the drivers for windows 7".
I even googled for working
Windows 7 drivers and found them, so I was stupid enough to buy that thing, in the sheer desperate hope, that the drivers would evolve and support more than the limited feature-set the drivers extracted from the Bootcamp update had.
Ok, then, after buying and unboxing, without making a video about it, I realized that the compatibility with Windows 7 was... crap. The mouse constantly entered some kind of sleep mode, so I had to click the left or right mouse button to wake it up again.. Constant lags etc. But I've no right to complain about that because Apple simply does not support 3rd party hardware... Ok, poo, that meant that I had to use it with my hackintosh... Still not that big deal. But the surface is really annoying... if your fingers aren't dried out like a granny during an Somalian summer, the gestures get a real pain in the ass... your finger start to be sticky (and the fingertips start to hurt!)because of this crappy, cheap feeling surface and mmmmmhhhh smudge appears and piles up on the edges of your movement radius. Eww.
Furthermore, the multitouch functionality is quite limited if you stick with the original software... WTF Apple?? The heroes, yeah they are heroes, who wrote the 3rd party application called
MagicPrefs made it possible to unleash the full power of the mouse. If you remember all the stuff you configured, you become a real productivity-beast! Also the optical resolution of the laser (obviously twin diodes) is awesome...
But: I don't use my Hackintosh that often. What for? I still haven't figured out what I should do with a mac. And I own (kinda) one...
So, luckily I was able to find a use for the Magic Mouse as a mouse for my Galaxy Tab (with the Overcome Rom on Android 2.2 Froyo base) and before someone asks... no, there are no gestures working on the Tab. How should they? There is just the standard Bluetooth HID driver available.
Basically it was wasted money... A 10€ cheapo-Bluetooth-mouse could do the same job.
The sad thing is: It would be an awesome device (besides the cheap surface that really annoys me) if Apple would only support it for other platforms. I know they don't want to give up their advantage (there wouldn't be much left then I guess).
When the Magic Trackpad first appeared on the Market, I thought again about getting one, but I soon came to my senses. Now I am waiting for the
Microsoft Touch mouse to be released in Europe... that will be my next purchase I guess.
To summarize it:
- I was stupid to buy it and wanted to use it with a Windows machine (my fault)
- Has great functions (when using MagicPrefs)
- Has a cheap surface (that's a massive downside)
- Isn't quite that ergonomic (use it for a while and you'll know what I'm talking about)
Lesson learned. I think.
While I was sitting on the toilet, where all great ideas are born, I thought whether or not I should write a post about my experience with the Apple Magic Mouse I purchased over a year ago... as you can see... I thought it might not be such a bad idea.
Everyone knows I'm not the biggest Apple-Fan but I like some of their innovations (yeah, they really do that sometimes!). I had a
Shuttle K45 Hackintosh running and had way too much money so I thought about the next best thing where I could burn my money. Luckily the 80€ (110$) Magic Mouse was released and due to my naive nature I thought "Huh, someone will surely reverse-engineer the drivers for windows 7".
I even googled for working
Windows 7 drivers and found them, so I was stupid enough to buy that thing, in the sheer desperate hope, that the drivers would evolve and support more than the limited feature-set the drivers extracted from the Bootcamp update had.
Ok, then, after buying and unboxing, without making a video about it, I realized that the compatibility with Windows 7 was... crap. The mouse constantly entered some kind of sleep mode, so I had to click the left or right mouse button to wake it up again.. Constant lags etc. But I've no right to complain about that because Apple simply does not support 3rd party hardware... Ok, poo, that meant that I had to use it with my hackintosh... Still not that big deal. But the surface is really annoying... if your fingers aren't dried out like a granny during an Somalian summer, the gestures get a real pain in the ass... your finger start to be sticky (and the fingertips start to hurt!)because of this crappy, cheap feeling surface and mmmmmhhhh smudge appears and piles up on the edges of your movement radius. Eww.
Furthermore, the multitouch functionality is quite limited if you stick with the original software... WTF Apple?? The heroes, yeah they are heroes, who wrote the 3rd party application called
MagicPrefs made it possible to unleash the full power of the mouse. If you remember all the stuff you configured, you become a real productivity-beast! Also the optical resolution of the laser (obviously twin diodes) is awesome...
But: I don't use my Hackintosh that often. What for? I still haven't figured out what I should do with a mac. And I own (kinda) one...
So, luckily I was able to find a use for the Magic Mouse as a mouse for my Galaxy Tab (with the Overcome Rom on Android 2.2 Froyo base) and before someone asks... no, there are no gestures working on the Tab. How should they? There is just the standard Bluetooth HID driver available.
Basically it was wasted money... A 10€ cheapo-Bluetooth-mouse could do the same job.
The sad thing is: It would be an awesome device (besides the cheap surface that really annoys me) if Apple would only support it for other platforms. I know they don't want to give up their advantage (there wouldn't be much left then I guess).
When the Magic Trackpad first appeared on the Market, I thought again about getting one, but I soon came to my senses. Now I am waiting for the
Microsoft Touch mouse to be released in Europe... that will be my next purchase I guess.
To summarize it:
- I was stupid to buy it and wanted to use it with a Windows machine (my fault)
- Has great functions (when using MagicPrefs)
- Has a cheap surface (that's a massive downside)
- Isn't quite that ergonomic (use it for a while and you'll know what I'm talking about)
Lesson learned. I think.
One year with the Apple Magic Mouse... or without.
2 comments:
The concept of a touch mouse is weird to me... A friend at work had one, a designer, and they quite liked it. But I had trouble getting used to not having any buttons.
Plus, the mouse seems too flat? My mouse at home is a Logitech, and it's more rounded and fits in my hand. The Magic Mouse I felt like I had to hold onto the sides of it in order to move it around
Very odd. But, hooray for adventures in technology! ;)
@Dawg: Yeah, the flat design is exactly what I meant with "not quite ergonomic" ^^
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