Apple mice are comically frustrating to use. I'd rather carry around a mouse of my own than use one of those pieces of crap.
Edit: even more funny is the "Magic" Trackpad. Watching people mouse around on big desktop monitors at the speed of molasses with one of those always cracks me up. The only "magic" in it is that it makes any mouse-intensive work take twice as long to complete.
I have one and love it as well. A giant modern trackpad in all its gesture-interface glory is a pretty awesome experience. I still like to use a mouse for precise tasks, but for web browsing, documentation reading, and general use.. it really can't be beaten.
Multitouch gestures are like keyboard shortcuts that you can activate without having to take your hand off the mouse. An expanded set of gestures such as provided by jitouch is extremely powerful.
There is software[1] available for mouse gestures, although it appears that it's third party and hasn't been updated in some time. Firefox has some very nice add-ons that do mouse gestures as well. For X11, there's Easystroke.
The "all-in-one gestures" Firefox add-on is the #1 reason why I use it as my main browser. Chrome doesn't have any decent gesture add-on (they even removed things like scrolling through tabs with the mouse wheel...).
I've looked at the gestures documented by Apple on their site and I didn't see anything that couldn't possibly be done better with a mouse and a mouse wheel (and decent software).
Try watching an experienced multi-button mouse user. They don't have to reposition their hand three times to cross the screen, or wait 300ms between every action for the gesture recognition algorithms to time out. Watching my coworkers pause all the time with their magic touchpads was very jarring for someone used to a more seamless flow of thought into action with a mouse. They probably don't even realize they are pausing, rather just subconsciously trained to avoid gestural misdetection by working more slowly.
And an experience trackpad user will have a ton of custom gestures set up, so half the time they don't even have to move the cursor around or resort to the keyboard.
Apple's defaults for cursor speed have always been really slow, which is sad because their trackpads are some of the few that are precise and accurate enough to work well with high sensitivity settings.
Nthed. It's not great for all use cases, and it feels a bit slow when you switch to it, but after a few minutes you'll be going almost as fast as with a normal mouse, but with much better ergonomics and with full access to gestures and inertial scrolling.
I can get to all four corners of my 27" monitor with my Apple trackpad, because the track speed varies with velocity. Flicking my finger 1" on the track surface moves the mouse a lot farther than slowly moving the same finger the same 1".
Track pads also allow gestures which greatly speed up app navigation and multitasking.
Most importantly, all my wrist problems went away when I got a trackpad because it's a more relaxed position for my hand, it requires little effort to use, and it works the extension muscles of my fingers.
It is fairly recent that Apple made the acceleration curves usable by default: classically Apple's cursors did not do this, and some people would seriously install Microsoft mouse drivers on their Macs specifically to get this acceleration behavior. It is highly likely that this person is talking about the situation from the last time he cared to evaluate Apple products, maybe five years ago (which frankly, I think is entirely fair for this thread's context).
I hate that macs have the mouse acceleration cranked up by default. Every time I have to show a coworker how to do something on his computer, I have to stifle the urge to throw his mouse across the room.
I'm not sure how that trackpad was set, but I can jump across my MBP 15" diagonal with less than 2" of finger movement (more of a flick, really).
After a few weeks of using it, the trackpad and its gestures have become second nature and have made me more productive by effectively disappearing into the background. It doesn't feel like there's an interface between me and the cursor anymore. Of course, YMMV.
I use the magic trackpad on a 27" iMac, it is a wonderful input device and exactly fast enough. There are always clueless users who don't know to adjust tracking speed just like there are always clueless Apple haters who want to believe that Apple would not have provided a tracking speed preference control to allow users to tune devices to their needs.
I have tried many times to correct the mouse acceleration curve on OS X, including by installing 3rd party software. So it's much more likely that there are a lot of clueless Apple users out there who don't realize how unproductive they are with such a poorly designed input system.
Comments
Apple mice are comically frustrating to use. I'd rather carry around a mouse of my own than use one of those pieces of crap.
Edit: even more funny is the "Magic" Trackpad. Watching people mouse around on big desktop monitors at the speed of molasses with one of those always cracks me up. The only "magic" in it is that it makes any mouse-intensive work take twice as long to complete.
I love my trackpad. You don't know what you're talking about. This is just another opportunity for you to shit post Apple.
I have one and love it as well. A giant modern trackpad in all its gesture-interface glory is a pretty awesome experience. I still like to use a mouse for precise tasks, but for web browsing, documentation reading, and general use.. it really can't be beaten.
What does it do that a mouse can't?
Multitouch gestures are like keyboard shortcuts that you can activate without having to take your hand off the mouse. An expanded set of gestures such as provided by jitouch is extremely powerful.
There is software[1] available for mouse gestures, although it appears that it's third party and hasn't been updated in some time. Firefox has some very nice add-ons that do mouse gestures as well. For X11, there's Easystroke.
[1] http://briankendall.net/xGestures/
The "all-in-one gestures" Firefox add-on is the #1 reason why I use it as my main browser. Chrome doesn't have any decent gesture add-on (they even removed things like scrolling through tabs with the mouse wheel...).
I've looked at the gestures documented by Apple on their site and I didn't see anything that couldn't possibly be done better with a mouse and a mouse wheel (and decent software).
Try watching an experienced multi-button mouse user. They don't have to reposition their hand three times to cross the screen, or wait 300ms between every action for the gesture recognition algorithms to time out. Watching my coworkers pause all the time with their magic touchpads was very jarring for someone used to a more seamless flow of thought into action with a mouse. They probably don't even realize they are pausing, rather just subconsciously trained to avoid gestural misdetection by working more slowly.
And an experience trackpad user will have a ton of custom gestures set up, so half the time they don't even have to move the cursor around or resort to the keyboard.
Apple's defaults for cursor speed have always been really slow, which is sad because their trackpads are some of the few that are precise and accurate enough to work well with high sensitivity settings.
Ya, I basically need to use my Magic Mouse while my MBP is plugged into an external monitor and I'm not using the trackpad.
Not having easy access to gestures slows me way down while working.
If I want to play a game in Bootcamp, I just use a standard two button mouse.
Nthed. It's not great for all use cases, and it feels a bit slow when you switch to it, but after a few minutes you'll be going almost as fast as with a normal mouse, but with much better ergonomics and with full access to gestures and inertial scrolling.
I can get to all four corners of my 27" monitor with my Apple trackpad, because the track speed varies with velocity. Flicking my finger 1" on the track surface moves the mouse a lot farther than slowly moving the same finger the same 1".
Track pads also allow gestures which greatly speed up app navigation and multitasking.
Most importantly, all my wrist problems went away when I got a trackpad because it's a more relaxed position for my hand, it requires little effort to use, and it works the extension muscles of my fingers.
It is fairly recent that Apple made the acceleration curves usable by default: classically Apple's cursors did not do this, and some people would seriously install Microsoft mouse drivers on their Macs specifically to get this acceleration behavior. It is highly likely that this person is talking about the situation from the last time he cared to evaluate Apple products, maybe five years ago (which frankly, I think is entirely fair for this thread's context).
I hate that macs have the mouse acceleration cranked up by default. Every time I have to show a coworker how to do something on his computer, I have to stifle the urge to throw his mouse across the room.
I'm not sure how that trackpad was set, but I can jump across my MBP 15" diagonal with less than 2" of finger movement (more of a flick, really).
After a few weeks of using it, the trackpad and its gestures have become second nature and have made me more productive by effectively disappearing into the background. It doesn't feel like there's an interface between me and the cursor anymore. Of course, YMMV.
I use the magic trackpad on a 27" iMac, it is a wonderful input device and exactly fast enough. There are always clueless users who don't know to adjust tracking speed just like there are always clueless Apple haters who want to believe that Apple would not have provided a tracking speed preference control to allow users to tune devices to their needs.
I have tried many times to correct the mouse acceleration curve on OS X, including by installing 3rd party software. So it's much more likely that there are a lot of clueless Apple users out there who don't realize how unproductive they are with such a poorly designed input system.