Apple Magic Mouse is a multi-touch mouse sold by Apple. It doesn’t have anything on its surface since it features a multitouch panel that you can click everywhere. With Magic Mouse you can use gestures on the multitouch panel such as Swipe and Scroll.
Apple Magic Mouse
The plastic box is of almost the same size as the mouse itself (good for the environment) and it has printed on the back the basic gestures and features that the mouse support:
Plastic box, instructions and mouse
The mouse comes with batteries already included. All I had to start using the mouse was to turn the button on its back on, check for software updates on my iMac, download and install the package, restart the computer and unplug my USB mouse.
Apple Magic Mouse box
The design in my opinion is stunning, it feels a lot better to have a wide surface available for clicking!
Features
By default my mouse didn’t have a Right Click option activated, therefore I went into System Preferences and modified the Mouse properties to enable a second button for the right click, in the “Secondary Click” option.
I had to practice few minutes though before I got used to some new gestures. For example the Swipe gesture may be tricky at first since the mouse is light. After a couple of times I learned to keep the mouse still holding it on the side with two fingers while swiping with other two fingers on the multitouch panel. This is most probably why the mouse doesn’t support gestures that require using more than two fingers.
It is also possible to use a Screen Zoom feature to enlarge items on the screen by holding down Ctrl and scrolling. Scroll is obviously 360° therefore you can scroll in any direction you want.
Exposè and Dashboard
Overall I am really enjoying the wide multitouch panel for scrolling and clicking, but I don’t seem to find a way though to activate Exposè nor the Dashboard natively in the Mouse options! I used Exposè quite often in the old Apple Mouse, hopefully Apple will add some ad hoc gestures also into Magic Mouse!
As a workaround, if you don’t use too much the “Right Click + Copy” option on the mouse, you could configure “Secondary Mouse” in the System Preferences -> “Exposè & Spaces” to activate one between Exposè or Dashboard from the mouse.
Also, the Active Screen Corners feature could be used to activate Exposè or Dashboard.
Would be great to hear what you guys think as well!
