nubero said:
All true but then again why have a little speaker that makes clicking sound then? My guess is, that the actual micro switch is gone and they emulate it by making the click sound while solely relying on the pressure sensors.
Another Question: Does anyone know if the Ball is really a ball? Or is it more like that red knob on the ThinkPads? I never liked those for moving the cursor around but i can very well imagine them for scrolling (which needn't be so precise).
I tried one out at the Apple Store (they were all out). Here are my impressions.
Understand that I like my Apple Pro mouse (as they used to call it: the mouse that came with my PowerMac G5) a lot, but would rather have a scroll mouse with the heft and solidity of a Pro mouse (as well as the aesthetics). I'm judging this against the Pro mouse, not so much against other mice (for instance, I use a little Macally scroll mouse with my iBook, and I'm not comparing it to that).
1. It doesn't have the weight or solidity of the Apple Pro mouse. It feels more like my old Logitech scroll mouse. I don't want to say flimsy, but a bit less substantial.
2. There is a downward motion that takes place when you click - it's not just touch sensitive in the sense that e.g. the scroll wheel and buttons on the 3G iPod are touch sensitive. Like the Pro mouse, the whole upper case of the mouse is a "button" that clicks down, but it feels a bit less substantial - like the plastic is thinner, or like the Pro mouse is weighted and the Mighty Mouse isn't. There's tactile sensation, but it's not quite as firm feeling as the Pro mouse.
3. The scroll ball is a tiny trackball. I found that it was easier to use up and down than left and right, and using it diagonally wasn't really practical. It also felt a bit unsubstantial; it didn't have the weight of a comparably sized ball-bearing, but more like a kind of aluminum bead. It wasn't quite as smooth as I wanted.
4. The only times I had right-clicking issues were when I was trying to get context menus on iTunes tracks - for some reason, I had to left-click on the tracks first, then right-click to get the context menu (then point to Get Info to get the Get Info window).
5. The tactile feedback for the squeeze was a bit insubstantial, too. It works as advertized, though: one squeeze and up comes dashboard.
6. I had real problems with using the scroll ball as a middle button. It seemed as though every time I used it, it behaved as a left or right button. That may have been the preference settings on the Mac I used, though.
I tried it with a few programs (iTunes, Keynote, Safari). Didn't try it with any really context-menu sensitive programs. I was mainly interested in the horizontal/vertical capabilities of the scroll ball; once I'd used the right-click a few times I felt I had a sense of that.
I would have preferred something with the solidity of the Pro mouse, and with a slightly larger (the size of a baby pea), more ball-bearing like track ball. Not sure if I'm going to buy it after all (and believe me, I was ready to buy).