About time
 

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/ptech/0....ap/index.html


Mac finally sells a two button mouse. Photoshop users rejoice.

Here's a more in-depth review:

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/mightymouse.ars

It's nice that Apple has finally introduced such a product, and that the price is reasonable. But aside from that it really isn't much of an issue. Many of us have been using multi-button mice for years on the Mac. I use a Wacom Intuitos graphics table that includes both a pressure/position sensitive stylus and a 3 button mouse with scroll wheel.

Over at apple's site on the FCP forum the mighty mouse is getting mixed reviews, although some people really like it. It also appears that OSX 10.4.2 has some hooks built into specifically for this product, and some have speculated that this can cause a slowdown in FCP 5 playback if you're using another brand of mouse....

Now i'm overly interested to give it a test run in fcp5 when I get to school.

Hopefully the journalism department picks up a few.

I can't imagine that a serious photoshop user wouldn't have a graphics tablet though. WACOM sells their Graphire series for about $100 which includes a wireless 3 button mouse with scroll wheel and a pressure sensitive stylus. These are really a great deal. The Intuitos series is nicer but much more expensive.

If photoshop is important to you and if funds are tight I think this is a much better productivity investment than the Apple mouse. You really can't "paint" effectively with a mouse! :-)

I picked up a Mighty Mouse and have been using it on Panther and FCP 4.5 HD for a day now. It's performance has been flawless. I use it in combination with a Shuttlepro.

As documented elsewhere, you have to be on Tiger in order to run the software that let's you customize the buttons. On Panther, you get the defaults which are Button 2 = Expose "All Windows", scrolling, and nothing for the "squeeze" button.

I wanted the mouse simply for the ability to scroll around on the timeline and it does this superbly. It's also very handy for scrolling file selection panes etc.

The Expose on Button 2 is ok but my decades old habit with a single button mouse are a problem as all clicking requires my finger to be on the left half of the mouse instead of anywhere. I'd say about half the time I get the expose action when I'm trying to click. However, the scrolling outweighs all that and ultimately, I can be trained on pointing.