They’re in the house! The brand new ultra-wide all-aluminum iMac has been unboxed inside the hallowed halls of the Engadget HQ, and inside was a real scarcity of wires, a keyboard (which now requires one less battery but otherwise looks exactly the same), and of course that brand new multitouch Magic Mouse. It feels much thinner than its predecessor, and the whole front of the unit provides a satisfying, unified click. The runners on the bottom make the mouse seem almost more appropriate for sledding than mousing, but it glides around just fine on a solid surface. Pics galore in the gallery below.
When we flicked the mouse on it was easy enough to spot it over Bluetooth on our regular Mac, but it only worked with tracking and single click — none of this capacitive nonsense without a software update, naturally. On the iMac’s first boot it was able to pick up the mouse and keyboard without a problem, even letting us use the capacitive scrolling to work through the setup wizard. We quickly spotted our first usability problem: coming from a trackpad heavy workflow, our fingers were expecting a capacitive tap-to-click action, instead of having to physically click the mouse. It’s not a huge problem, but there’s no 1:1 usability model between an Apple trackpad and this mouse. Scrolling is single finger, with a two finger left or right swipe doing back / forward in a browser or the finder. Right clicking requires a lifting of the left click finger, just like the Mighty Mouse, though all-in-all it feels much less frustrating to use than the Mighty Mouse, which almost seems to rage against the click at times. Like we said before: no pinch to zoom, but given the shape and texture of the surface, we’re not sure we could pull it off even if the software allowed for it.
Filed under: Desktops, Peripherals
New iMac and Magic Mouse unboxing and quick hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Comments
Mattel’s hoverboard keeps McFly planted on terra firma, faraway from water
WSJ: Apple testing 8-inch iPad
