“On Tuesday, Apple brought to market something it had resisted making for 21 years: a two-button mouse. You’d never guess it by looking. It looks precisely like Apple’s previous mouse — white, one-piece, domed, shiny — except that it has a tiny light-gray trackball at one end. (*Very* tiny, actually. It’s more of a trackpea, in fact. TrackBB, maybe.) The clever part of this $50 replacement mouse, called the Mighty Mouse, is that , you can configure it to be EITHER a one-button mouse OR a two-button mouse, using a preferences panel that gets installed from a CD,” David Pogue writes for The New York Times.

“The trackpea is awesome. It smoothly scrolls through lists, menus, documents and Web pages — but because it’s a ball, you can also scroll a window horizontally, diagonally, or even in an L shape… When you’re turning the trackpea, it feels and sounds like the scroll dial on an iPod. You hear that little ‘t-t-t-t-t’ rapid-clicking sound like the spinner in the game of Life… Contrary to popular online hysterics, however, the sounds are not loud; in fact, you can’t even hear them without holding it up to your ear,” Pogue writes.

“The Mighty Mouse works on a Windows PC, but only the two ‘buttons’ and vertical scrolling,” Pogue explains. “You lose out on the omnidrectional scrolling, the trackpea clicking, side-button functions, and the ability to use the mouse in one-button mode. (My unsolicited advice to Apple: Write a Windows driver that restores these functions. The more you can show the downtrodden, virus-plagued Windows owners what the elegance of the Mac is all about, the better off you’ll be. See also: iPod.)”

Pogue writes, “As a power user, I certainly prefer the Mighty Mouse to my Mac’s original, no-scroll-wheel mouse, which I’d long ago replaced with a cheap two-button mouse from Logitech. (Mac OS X works with any two-button mouse, like those designed for Windows.) But few other mice have the trackpea, and I don’t think any other mouse can switch automatically between one- and two-button personalities depending on who’s using the computer.”

There’s much more in the full article, including the “firestorm of hyperventilating debate” the Mighty Mouse has unleashed on the Web between “the Mac haters vs. the Windows haters” here.

Advertisment: Order your Apple “Mighty Mouse” now from the Apple Store online!

Related MacDailyNews articles:
Apple’s Mighty Mouse dissected (with image) – August 04, 2005
The Motley Fool: ‘Mighty Mouse may be the next step in Apple’s quiet crusade to lure Windows users’ – August 04, 2005
Mossberg pans Apple Mighty Mouse, says Microsoft’s latest mouse is better – August 04, 2005
Review: Apple’s Mighty Mouse – Third-party USB mouse makers should be very afraid – August 03, 2005
Apple introduces multi-button ‘Mighty Mouse’ with ‘Scroll Ball’ for Mac and Windows – August 02, 2005
Apple’s new ‘Mighty Mouse’ provides audio feedback for clicking and scrolling – August 02, 2005
Apple’s mythical two-button mouse – March 19, 2005
RUMOR: Apple may soon debut two-button mouse – March 15, 2005
Apple’s Pro Mouse is truly a joy to use… for about five minutes – May 29, 2004
The time has come for Apple to ship a two-button scroll mouse standard – June 09, 2003
Should Apple reconsider the one-button mouse? – October 23, 2002