Based purely on aesthetics, Apple's new $69 Magic Mouse is a crowning achievement for the company's design team, and its Multi-Touch features work well. But it may not be incentive enough to abandon your current mouse.
Multi-Touch technology acts in place of a scrollball. You can use the whole surface above the Apple logo for finger swipes. Scrolling with Multi-Touch is easy and feels natural. The other helpful Multi-Touch functions are two-finger swiping left or right for moving forward or bak in iPhoto or Safari, and holding down the Control key on your keyboard and swiping up and down to zoom.
Multi-Touch works smoothly, but it doesn't feel any more or less advantageous than a scrollball. I hope driver updates or third-party applications will include more functions that will demonstrate the input advantages of Multi-Touch.
There are only two buttons on the Magic Mouse, a severe limitation especially for anyone who's already using a mouse with more than two buttons, like the Apple Mouse.
I had no transmission problems with the Magic Mouse's Bluetooth, which has a range of 33 feet. After sitting idle long enough to trigger the mouse's sleep mode, the mouse reconnects with the Mac virtually instantaneously a pleasant surprise.
The biggest disappointment with the Magic Mouse is the way the mouse feels as you move it on a table, mouse pad, or desktop it's a grinding, rough feel.
Although it's not perfect, the Magic Mouse successfully combines design and usability. It's great as a two-button wireless mouse, but if you need more than two buttons, the Magic Mouse is not for you.
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