My Best Computer Mouse Ever

The batteries on my Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse finally died, and it suddenly set me thinking about how well it has served me. I’ve used computer mice for almost as long as they existed. Through the years I’ve had used and owned many mice, including variants like trackballs. Some are pleasant to use and others horrible. But the Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse, which I acquired in mid 2008, was absolutely the best of all of them. It’s amazing how much a simple device can be made such a joy to use.

I’m sure you’ve heard or seen mouse that are contoured shaped to fit the and comfortably, or constructed with special materials so that they feel good to hold. The Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse doesn’t have any of these. But it is superbly comfortable to hold and use. It makes me think how much marketing nonsense surround those “premium” mice out there.

Here’s just some information to share with the non-Apple users out there. The Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse works with a PC too. There is nothing proprietary about it that makes it work only with a Mac. It’s a bluetooth mouse, so you don’t need to carry around or attach any silly wireless receiver dongle for the mouse to work (assuming, of course, your computer has a bluetooth wireless interface). In case you’ve not been updated since the dark ages… this mice does left click, right click and centre click too. It has a 360-degree scroll ball, and serves as the centre click button. It uses invisible laser light to track position, and it is mighty accurate.

The scroll ball is miniscule, and even though it looks like it might be difficult to use it, it’s actually quite comfortable and easy to use.

An “added” extra that not many people know (particularly the non-Apple users) is that the Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse can be “squeezed”. Yes, it has pressure sensors on its left and right sides to sense a squeeze, which can be configured to activate certain user interface functions.

Another thing is the buttons. Yes, you may be forgiven if you really thought the mouse had only one button. That’s because the whole mouse surface is itself the one seamless button. If that’s just one button, then how do we get left and right button clicks? Ah, the mouse top surface is touch sensitive. It can sense whether your finger is tapping on the left or right sides of the mouse, and translates that into the left or right button click.

What’s more interesting is that, while I was checking my facts on Apple’s product page, I found out that the Apple Wireless Might Mouse can operate with either 1 or 2 AA-sized batteries. I.e. while you can put two batteries into the mouse, it only needs one to operate. Kind of reminds me about 1+1 UPS redundancies! Haha.

Amazing huh.

Anyway, back to my dead battery. The thing is that I’ve been wondering when my mouse battery would die. None of my other wireless keyboards or wireless mice last very long. But this mouse has been going for over 8 months. I use it practically every day, for many hours too. Well, I guess it didn’t make it to 9 months. When I opened the mice, I was reminded that the batteries supplied by Apple were Energizer Lithium batteries. (Not that I remember noticing them anyway when I installed them initially.) Maybe that’s why the batteries lasted so long.

Incidentally, the Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse reports its battery level to the OS. I’m not sure if this works in Windows, but the battery level is shown in iStat pro. It had been going at over 90% almost all the time, then down to 80%, then the week before it died, it was under 30%. It seems like the battery level reporting isn’t very accurate.