Using a Mac means using a mouse. It doesn’t matter which mouse, Apple, Microsoft or whatever.
My list of the Top 7 Best Utilities will make your mouse do new tricks and have more fun.
These are not your right-click, scroll wheel utilities. These are cool little utilities that make for a hot mouse.
Let’s face it. For most of us as Mac users we’re mouse users. Keyboard short cuts are nice, but it’s a point and click world.
Mac OS X has a few added touches to the mouse, like increasing the pointer size, changing track speed and so on.
That leaves plenty of room for clever Mac utilities developers to come up with clever ideas for the rest of us.
Most Mac mouse utilities are inexpensive to free. Let me start with the cash hogs first, and review toward free.
#7 – OmniDazzle
This is a nifty little utility which adds som pizzaz to presentations where your mouse is on screen.
OmniDazzle is from the same folks who develop OmniWeb, so they have an understanding of what’s cool on a Mac, for a hefty $14.95.
Add Pixie Dust to your mouse movements. Shine a flashlight on specific areas of the screen using the mouse. There’s even a Bullseye and a highlighter pen.
#6 – MondoMouse
Similarly priced, MondoMouse adds tools you can use on your Mac, PPC or Intel.
Move a window without a click, resize a window without a click, switch to an application whose window is behind others without a click.
You can’t buy it without a click. Still $14.95.
#5 – uPointer
Fully one third lower in price that #6 or #7, uPointer lets you find your mouse’s cursor on screen.
Some of you are thinking, “What’s so hard about that?” On a big screen with many objects open, it can be a challenge. It’s worse when using a projector and the screen is huge.
I like the pulsating pointer option. OK, don’t take than any farther.
#4 – Mousepose
The makers of the terrific FotoMagic also make Mousepose. At five cents less you get a spotlight on the area around the mouse pointer.
Honestly, this is a decent feature that OS X should have already. It’s good for moving the mouse around on a busy screen during a presentation.
It’s also excellent as a tool to keep the fully bored from getting worse.
#3 – ClickScroll
This is an $8 utility which adds scrolling to your Mac. Hmmm. Isn’t that built in, too? Yes. But you have to use those pesky scroll bars.
ClickScroll lets you scroll without using the scroll bar or even the mouse’s scroll wheel.
This one even works without a mouse, for those of you wedded to a Mac
laptop
notebook.
#2 – LazyMouse
This is another utility whose function should be built-in to Mac OS X. LazyMouse is utterly simple and a favorite mouse utility for many Mac users.
LazyMouse is a preference pane which moves the mouse cursor to the default button on a dialog box. That’s it, but it saves time and is handy.
Isn’t that built-in to Windows XP? It’s $6.85 on the Mac.
#1 – xGestures
Finally, you can gesture using your Mac’s mouse. What? You’re not sure what that means? From the xGestures developer:
Still not sure what that means? A gesture is a mouse movement. Instead of just assigning an action to a left-click or right-click or a click, assign it to a movement of the mouse.
Not bad for $5, huh?
Free – Wraparound
Many Mac users have very large or multiple screens. All that screen real estate means a lot of wrist action and movement for the mouse pointer.
Your Mac’s mouse pointer can move between the screens, but not wrap around the screens. For large screen users, moving from one end of the screen to the other takes time, action, and the mouse pointer can get lost because there’s no “wraparound.”
Guess what? That’s what Wraparound does. Move the pointer to the far right and it shows up on the far left. Not bad for free, huh?
Add up the price tag for all those cool little Mac mouse utilities and you’ve got more than the price of a new mouse.
About Alexis Kayhill
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