Apple’s Magic Mouse + Magic Prefs
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For Christmas, one of the gifts I received was Apple’s new magic mouse, which you can buy here. I absolutely love this thing. The Magic Mouse is the total revamp of Apple’s previous Mighty Mouse. Apple has take multi touch technology and placed it in this mouse. The entire top of the mouse is one big touch pad that can accept multiple gestures.
There is one glaring problem with the new Magic Mouse, which is the fact that Apple decided to not build any extended functionality into the multi touch surface. The only thing it allows you to do is flick up and down, which represents scrolling and two finger swipe right and left which cycles forward and backward in your browser. With such a powerful piece of hardware, I wonder why they made the software so limited.
Alas, all is not lost. Some awesome developers came up with Magic Prefs. Magic Prefs allows all the functionality that the Magic Mouse was built for. Pinch to zoom, three finger click for expose, and much more is now available if you install Magic Prefs (shown below). With this software, the Magic Mouse has become the best mouse on the market. It has become the standard for all other mouse makers to be compared to, just like the iPhone did to the mobile phone market. If you don’t already have the Magic Mouse, I definitely suggest getting it.
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Hi Matthew,
The Magic Mouse is… uhm…nice, I like the ‘look’ and ‘feel’ of it.. I wouldn’t give glowing reviews though… as you said, the software is pretty limited (I spell that with the following letters…c r a p) and I find Magic Prefs to be a bit of a nightmare to say the least…IF you turn on more than 3 or 4 gestures… (well at least if I do)… the mouse goes on a rampage… doesn’t seem to know what to do… so it gives me a kaleidoscopic array of flashing widgets, Expose Desktop, Expose Apps, Dashboard, Application Switcher (new in ver. 1.6.1 & for the life on me I can’t figure out WHY Apple didn’t code THAT in…), Spotlight and merrily tries to dish up its menu of “can dos”) …
I also find it a little misleading in that Magic Prefs promises you the world… but once you have it in your hot little hands, 9 of it’s 24 selections come with ~ *potentially hard to use ~… AND THAT’S A TRUE STATEMENT IF EVER THERE WAS ONE!!! as I think most of the others could use that disclaimer as well… potential is there…and kudos to the authors, but I think it needs quite a bit more ‘tweaking’ before I’d give it a ‘two thumbs up’… otherwise what will the authors do with all their spare time? >:)
But in all fairness, we’re still pretty close to the starting line… so having said that… I’m looking forward to Magic Prefs updates and hopefully JOB will ditch that abysmally ugly iPad and get back to improving what he already has… I think he scored big time with the Mighty Mouse…hopefully Magic Mouse will improve to the same level.
Cheers
Dave
Hey Dave,
Thanks for the comment. I do agree that adding multiple gestures makes using the magic mouse difficult, but the few that I have added seem to work well. I’m sure after a few more tweaks the software will recognize mistakes with gestures.
That being said, I still will be using magic prefs because it is much better than not having it at all.
Matt
Hi Matt,
You’re right of course, and so will I… be using Magic Prefs that is.
One rather strange thing I’ve noticed though since installing it, is that my computer ‘beeps’ whenever I roll over a menu item within Magic Prefs menu (within System Preferences) and ‘arbitrarily’ in numerous other ways as well… any ideas?
Personally I think it’s conflicting with some other program I have installed, but I’m unable to find the culprit, if that is in fact the problem…
I’m hoping that maybe you have some insight here.
Dave
Hmm…i haven’t seen that problem myself. try reinstalling the app.
matt