Design

The first thing you’ll notice about the Magic Mouse is the lack of distinct buttons on the mouse. As you look closely, it has a plastic multi-touch trackpad at the top. The bottom is completely cast in aluminum. There’s an on/off switch and an aluminum cover that holds two AA-batteries. It has a relatively long length compared to other mice, yet it’s thinner than most.

Impressions

Handling

Due to the thin design, I found it’s harder to hold — especially in the beginning. A mouse usually has a shape that naturally fits into your hand, but the Magic Mouse doesn’t. It has an almost flat surface, but that’s required if you like multi-touch. You can get used to it with effort, but the lack of supporting your hand could be painful if you find yourself using it for long periods of time. Designers and other people who are using the mouse for large parts of their day should consider a more comfortable mouse.

Surface Tracking

The Magic Mouse is fitted with a high quality laser. It beats about any other laser mouse I’ve seen, including the Logitech MX Revolution mouse. It tracks on many surfaces, even on transparent surfaces like glass. This virtually eliminates the need mouse pads. However, keep in mind that the tracking surface should be clean, as the mouse ‘collects’ every bit of dirt. I had to clean the mouse after using it for only 15 minutes.

Scrolling

The Magic Mouse uses ‘momentum-scrolling’. This means that you can use the entire mouse to scroll horizontally and vertically. You can either do this in a slow pace, or flick through a large page or list just like on the iPhone and iPod Touch. It doesn’t always go as smooth as on the iPhone, but certainly comes close. Scrolling is much easier now, and doesn’t bother your fingers like if you were using a scroll wheel all the time.

Batteries

The Magic Mouse runs on AA batteries. Just like the Wireless Mighty Mouse, you can use either one or two batteries. One battery runs out faster, but decreases the weight of the mouse. You can’t recharge the batteries of the mouse with a cradle unfortunately, but the batteries won’t run out as fast as with a traditional wireless mouse, so this won’t be an issue for most users.

Gaming

Is the Magic Mouse suitable to play games? In a word, no. The problem with the Mighty Mouse and now with the Magic Mouse is that it can sense with which finger you’re pressing the button. It can detect either left or right, but not both. So when you’re playing a game that requires the mouse (shooters), you usually need to aim with the right mouse button and shoot with the left button. This just doesn’t work. With gaming you’re also using the mouse all day, which could hurt as explained above.

Buttons and Gestures

The Magic Mouse only has one tactile button. This one resides below the trackpad. As said earlier, it can sense with which finger you are pressing the button, and can then perform the requested operation. Scrolling is done by making strokes with your finger in either horizontal or vertical direction. Doing this with two fingers to the left or right allows you to browse back and forth between the last visited pages in your browser. The Mighty Mouse had the options to activate Dashboard when pressing the scroll ball, and Exposé could be activated by pressing the two side buttons of the mouse. The Magic Mouse can’t do this, which is disappointing. I felt they could at least enable this with three and four finger gestures — or something like that.

Conclusion

The Magic Mouse is the latest mouse from Apple. The multi-touch features are innovative compared to the other mice that are on the market today. Only the Logitech Air has a competitive mouse with multi-touch, though it can’t compete with the stunning design of the Magic Mouse. Scrolling through pages works great, especially through large pages. The handling is something you need to get used to, but I recommend you go to your local Apple Store or reseller and take the mouse for a spin before making a purchase decision. This is especially true for people with physical disabilities, as it’s not really RSI-friendly. The other downside is the lack of buttons or gestures to launch Dashboard or Exposé, which need to be activated with the keyboard or with one of the other features in Mac OS X.

Pros

• Design
• Weight
• Momentum Scrolling
• Multi-Touch

Cons

• Leaves your hand feeling painful after handling all day
• No buttons or gestures to activate Dashboard or Exposé

Rating

Apple Magic Mouse | 4 out of 5: HardwareForums.com Recommended

Relevant Links

• Apple Magic Mouse product page
• Find an Apple retail store near you

Right, so Apple obviously has a myriad of patents under its belt, but so does Google, and so does Palm. Palm??? yeah, Palm, they are in it pretty deep with Apple right now over the whole multi-touch ordeal and their new phone. After a little searching and reading, Apples patents really only seem to apply to one of the specific motions involved in the multi-touch interface. I’m sure at some point there will be an agreement, even more so because Intel is planning to use the Android platform in its upcoming netbook, and multi-touch will be a large part of the package, but i guess we’ll wait and see.

Read More

Note: When the Macbook reboots during the EFI update, you could hear a loud beep. This is normal behaviour.

Read More

The update can be installed through Software Update, and the actual installation of the firmware update requires the Macbook to be connected to AC power.

Read More

The Portable Blu-ray Super Multi Drive supports on the Quiet Drive Technology reduces the noise level of audio and video playback while also delivering increased writing reliability. Liquid Crystal Tilt/Blur Compensator plays and records to discs more reliably – the ad Research technology that compensates for warped discs. Dual/Double Layer recording provides nearly twice the capacity of a single layer recordable Blu-ray-R (25 Gbytes vs. 50 Gbytes).

Read More

Read More

Read More

[ Read More ]

What’s included

General

• Includes recent Apple security updates.
• Addresses stability issues with video playback, processor core idling, and remote disc sharing for MacBook Air.
• Addresses an issue in which some Macs could unexpectedly power on at the same time each day.
• Resolves a stability issue in TextEdit that could be found when accessing the color palette.
• Improves Spotlight indexing performance.
• Fixes an issue in which contacts might not sync properly with PalmOS-based devices.
• Improves iPhone sync reliability with iCal and Address Book.
• Includes improvements to Active Directory (see this article for more information).
• Improves Speech Dictionary.
• Fixes Kerberos authentication issues for Mac OS X 10.5 clients that connect to certain Samba servers, such as Mac OS X Server version 10.4.
• Includes extensive graphics enhancements.

Address Book

• Addresses stability issues that may occur when creating a Smart Group.
• Resolves a printing issue with address cards containing information that spans more than one page.

Disk Utility and Directory Utility

• Improves reliability when rebuilding a software mirror RAID volume in Disk Utility.
• Improves reliability of server status displayed in Directory Utility.

iCal

• Updates iCal to more accurately handle repeating events.
• Improves performance when choosing meeting attendees.
• Resolves an issue in which the “Refresh All” option may be dimmed (”grayed out”) in the contextual menu for certain calendars.
• Fixes issues with read-only calendars.
• Addresses an issue that prevents an invitee from moving an event to a different calendar.
• Resolves an issue with syncing published calendars.

Mail

• Addresses performance issues related to displaying IMAP messages.
• Resolves an issue with SMTP settings for AIM, Compuserve, Hanmail, Yahoo!, and Time Warner Road Runner email accounts.
• Addresses stability issues that may occur when dragging a file to the Mail icon in the Dock.
• Addresses an issue with the “Organized by Thread” view in which the date does not appear when the thread is collapsed.
• Resolves an issue in which RSS feeds could temporarily disappear from the sidebar.
• Improves Mail robustness when sending messages.
• Improves reliability when saving drafts that have attachments.

MobileMe

• Improves overall sync reliability.
• Improves Back to My Mac reliability.

Time Machine

• Improves Time Machine reliability with Time Capsule.
• Addresses performance issues that may affect initial and in-progress backups.
• Fixes an issue in which an incorrect alert message could appear stating that a backup volume does not have enough free space.
• Time Machine can now back up iPhone backups that are on your Mac, as well as other items in (~/Library/Application Support).

[ Source Apple ]

[ Read More ]