How To Make The Most Of Your Mac’s Mouse.

If there is anything ultimately common to Mac and Windows PC users, it’s the mouse (or, trackpad for notebook users). Love ‘em or hate ‘em, we use ‘em.

Most of us have a mouse (even many notebook users), and most iMac users these days go for the Apple variety, the Mighty Mouse. How do you make a mouse better? Mousepose‘ and SteerMouse.

The Mac has plenty of utilities to enhance the Mac mousing experience, and we have a few favorites. Mousepose’ highlights your Mac’s mouse pointer on screen. SteerMouse adds functionality to your mouse that not even Mighty Mouse can provide.

SteerMouse is an enhanced driver for USB and Bluetooth mice. Or, mouses. Or, handheld tracking devices which use a combination of hand-eye-coordination to effect specific changes to the on-screen user interface of a Mac. You get the idead.

Why do you need more settings and capabilities than Apple’s sparse Might Mouse functionality? Because more is better. Sometimes. There isn’t much to what a Mac mouse does. It points. It clicks. It gets dirty.

SteerMouse can’t fix the dirt issue, but it adds functionality beyond Apple’s system preference for the mouse, sparse with simple tracking, scrolling, double click functions, and the standard button functions.

SteerMouse does more and provides additional and highly granular features not available from Apple.

The button setting screen sets up the buttons. There’s also a screen for scroll ball settings to manipulate your mouse’s scroll wheel, or, nipple, as in the case of Mighty Mouse. The cursor setting screen has individual settings for tracking speed and sensitivity.

My favorite function is the automatic and magical cursor move. When a window or dialog box is activated, SteerMouse moves the mouse pointer to a button so you don’t have to move the mouse there. Just like in Windows. Ugh. I hated to say that.

I haven’t seen one yet, but Steer Mouse provides support for up to 16 buttons on your mouse, assign shortcut keystrokes to a mouse button, scroll horizontally and vertically. And more.

It’s like having super powers for Mighty Mouse. What if you don’t use Mighty Mouse? SteerMouse supports over a dozen additional popular mice. Mouses. Mouse pointing devices. That includes Microsoft, Logitech, Apple and Kensington. Even Bluetooth mice. Mouses. Mouse pointing devices.

That’ll help your mouse learn new tricks, but what else is there that could get mouse lovers everywhere so excited on a Friday afternoon? Mousepose‘.

This nifty little utility from Boinx is the perfect add on for any Mac user who does presentations or demos or records screen shots for instruction or video.

Simply put, Mousepose’ dims the screen around a spot around the mouse pointer.

As you move the mouse pointer around the screen, the background stays dim, but the spotlight highlights where the mouse is. Focus, focus, focus. Moving a mouse around on a large screen during a presentation means the mouse point gets lost. People can’t see it. Now they can.

New features in Mousepose’ include the ability to expand the highlight to include a window. There’s even keystroke visualization. Think of it as a way for the audience to see the keys your press during your presentation without watching your fingers.

Mousepose‘ comes with other features, too, including AppleScript support, Speech Recognition, and can be managed by the popular Salling Clicker which can control your Mac and mouse pointer via a Bluetooth enable mobile phone.

Yes, Virginia, a mouse can learn new tricks.

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Off Topic #58 - Do politicians use personal computers? Of course. We’ve heard Barack Obama prefers a Mac, while Hillary Clinton uses a Dell, though, apparently neither of the candidates can bowl. Does Obama’s potential vice president use a Mac? Even Clinton acknowledges Apple’s brand power but says she can’t afford a Mac. Maybe she’d win if she used a Mac.