New Apple Magic Mouse, not so Magical?
Yes, Apple, it’s pretty. But – by making the wireless keyboard and mouse the standard with your iMacs – aren’t you just adding piles of garbage to landfills? Why doesn’t the iMac have a built-in battery charger for the “Magic Mouse” – that would really be magical.
I’m going to keep the wired keyboard and mouse for our specifications. What do you think? Would you rather have this mouse, even with the environmental cost?
4 responses so far
Michael
Elizabeth Housley
Hard to say – I’ll have to play with it before I pass judgment.
My own lab of iMacs at Queens College is stocked with wired Mighty Mouses. They kinda stink. The cords are very short, which makes it hard to do maneuvering across the big wide screens – lots of the pick-up-and-move-over maneuvers. It’s especially bad for faculty members who come to my lab and use them for the first time (gives them a bad impression of Macs in general!). Newcomers can’t seem to get the no-button thing, either.
That said, I definitely like the idea of touch gestures on the mouse, as I use them very extensively on my Macbook’s touchpad. I’ll probably be hitting up the Apple Store soon to play around.
I think you’re totally right.
I have the wired in my dual boot classroom with 24″ iMacs and in my Mac Media Lab with 23″ Cinema displays – as long as the mouse is plugged into the keyboard, I don’t find the cord is too short – but I agree that they “stink”! The ‘pea’ as Apple calls it is a disaster – a little dust and it stops working…
We also have the Mighty Mouse on all our public Macs in the library areas and student lounges throughout the building – and essentially if we wanted to keep the scroll ball working, we’d have to replace them every few weeks.
I just wish they’d made a wired version of this mouse – I’m definitely not going to go around replacing 600 batteries every few months! : )
I don’t get it. Why not just use NiMH rechargeable AAs? True, it’ll still be work replacing and recharging batteries, but at least you’re not throwing alkalines away.
The real issue I see is keeping the wireless devices from walking away in a lab environment. For that reason alone, I’ll still spec machines with the wired keyboard and mouse.
One could – but the labor involved in changing and recharging batteries for hundreds of computers all over a university? That’s a full time job on its own!