Surprise! Apple’s Mighty Mouse Is Multi-Button.

Just when Tera complains about there being no new news, Apple drops the other shoe. A new mouse. Ho hum. No, wait. It’s Apple’s first multi-button mouse. It’s called “Mighty Mouse.”

It’s not just multi-button (what would you expect from Apple?), it looks like a single button mouse and it even scrolls.

It’s like dark chocolate on a cold and rainy night. Now I’ve got to plan a trip to the nearest Apple Store to check out the mighty little beast that Apple calls Mighty Mouse.

This isn’t your father’s two-button mouse.

Mighty Mouse has a special “touch-sensitive” sensor that detects both right and left clicks from the front of the mouse, on the right and left side. Just like most two-button mice.

In the front of the mouse is a little “nipple”, an innovative Scroll Ball which allows you to scroll 360-degrees. Wait! There’s more. Built in is the ability to scroll horizontal, vertical and diagonal.

My Microsoft wheel mouse won’t do that. Leave it to Apple to figure out what we need before we figured out we needed it. Do I need it?

To the left and right sides of Mighty Mouse you’ll find the only real buttons. These are programmable buttons that you can use with different applications. Gone are the days of one-button mousing on the Mac.

In one swell foop, Apple has taken the lowly and much criticized single-button mouse and leap frogged the mouse world. Remember all those complaints about “Why is Apple still stuck on using a single-button mouse on the Mac?

Everyone else had two buttons. Or clickable scroll wheels with programmable toggles and solid state slides. Of course, all that ultra cool technology wasn’t as easy to use as a single-button mouse or a simple two-button mouse.

Somehow Apple has managed to take all the technical features of most of the other mouse buttons and shove them into a mouse that pretty much looks like the Mac’s single-button mouse (with a “nipple” on the front, and buttons on the sides).

There’s “force sensitive” buttons on the front that you can’t see but act like a multi-button mouse when you press to “click.”

Amazingly, Mighty Mouse is made to work with OS X Tiger, so if you want all the cool features, they’ll work best in Tiger.

What’s all this good for? Tera will let you know when she does her test drive. The Divine Missy T loves to use the “hot spots” in the corner and sides of the screen to invoke Dashboard, Expose’ and DragThing. Flick the wrist while holding the mouse and each feature shows up instantly.

No more. Mighty Mouse changes that so Tera won’t even have to flick the wrist. It’s all in how you handle your fingers. As always.

One more thing: Mighty Mouse does Windows. Yep, this little critter is PC compatible (Windows 2000 and XP) and is standard USB 1.1 and USB 2.0, so it’ll work on Macs and Windows machines with USB connectors.

OK, enough talk. More action. Use your old, outdated, antiquated, ancient mouse to Click Here to visit the Apple site and check all the details.

As soon as we’ve picked up a Mighty Mouse and put it to work, uh, well, mousing around, we’ll let you know what we think.

In the meantime, here’s a chance for you to let us know what you think. We’re running a “mouse poll” in the Mac360 Forums. Click Here to see what others are saying and to sound off. And vote. Or, just look at the pretty pictures (me!).

“If it’s not one thing, it’s always something.”—Roseanne Rosannadanna.

Off Topic Note: I’ve updated the Mac360 Store with over 100 new categories-- More Macs, more iPods, more Mac books, more software. Click Here and select any category for more detail, or use the handy search function. Whenever you buy from Amazon through the Mac360 Store you help support Mac360. Finally, what is it about her Mac that caught Kate MacKenzie’s hair on fire? Somehow or another she fell out of love with her Mac and rushed into the arms of Windows Vista. Read the details about her American Tragedy.