Meep.

A scroll ball? Splendid.

Buttons on the sides? Uh, sure, but they’re just where you had to squeeze the old mouse in order to lift it while clicking, so it’s going to be a bit confusing. (Or maybe they’re even still needed for that, and only moonlight as buttons, I’m not quite sure from the page.)

An invisible right button? How dumb is that? You spend twenty years getting non-geeks used to single-button mice, and when you finally add another you make it invisible, so that your users will be puzzled by the 50% chance of a contextual menu appearing?!

Argh, and I was gonna buy a Wacom tablet when I came back from vacation… am I really going to spend fifty more euros for a mouse? Argh, argh, argh.

And why do I need both? Because I use the pen with my left hand, and the mouse with my right hand, so Wacom’s included mouse and its scrollwheel are useless for me.

Let’s say I’ll first buy the tablet, and then wait for a month to see if I still need the mouse. Plus, it also gives me time to read what the first users think of it. Because, technically, there are several ways for that concept to fuck up (not only at the left click / right click leve, but also the scrollball getting clogged like an old mouse).

P.S. Apple Matters: “Mighty Mouse can be used as a single- or multi-button mouse depending on the user’s preference.” But I don’t think they intend it to replace the default mouse for a while anyway.

P.S. And on the ‘Design’ page [via]: “A tiny speaker inside Mighty Mouse produces button-clicking and Scroll Ball-rolling sound effects.” What. The. Fuck. Plus, if that does mean that buttons arent mechanical at all, how do you rest your hand upon the mouse without clicking? (With a speaker and a tactile zone, don’t be surprised it doesn’t come in a wireless version.)

P.S. I hope I’ll be able to see and touch one in Bordeaux, but if there’s really no mechanical button, as seems to be the case, I doubt I’ll want to buy it (even though I like the idea of using the side buttons for an all-mouse access to Exposé). They should just had copied the Microsoft Starck mouse, replacing the scrollwheel with a trackpoint.

P.S. I don’t get it — on the Quicktime VR it totally seems to be articulated just like the current mouse. But then why did they need to put a speaker inside to produce “button-clicking sound effects”?

P.S. Even if clicking is mechanical and the tactical zone only determines which finger is touching the mouse, it still implies you’d only touch the mouse on one side when you’re clicking. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve always got two fingers on my mouse — one on each side — so I definitely can’t see how their system would determine which side I’m pressing (since the sensors clearly don’t quantify pression, they only detect contact). No, really, that can’t be ergonomic.

P.S. AppleInsider: clicking is indeed mechanical just like the classic mouse, and sensors determine whether you clicked left, right or center (the scrollball doesn’t push into the mouse either) and, since they only detect contact, the main button has priority and you have to lift your index off the mouse for a right click to register. Sucks. I’m sure it’s a habit one can very well learn, but it’s just dumb to have to get used to that (and also pay for $50 worth of wireful technology) just because Steve Jobs doesn’t want a split mouse body. I’ll be just fine with the Wacom tablet and MaxiMice. Pfft.