[Mini-Review] Apple Pro Mouse!

All right, we had to have one, just to see what the fuss was all about. Spent $60 we could ill afford to lose so we could comment sensibly on what was the hottest thing from Cupertino in years, the subject of scary lawsuits and an unbelievable amount of useless punditry. Verdict: it's very nice. . .

And totally natural and easy to use. You won't miss the mouse button at all. However, for those of you with USB-upgraded PCI PowerMacs, you won't be able to use this thing unless you plug it into a USB hub like we just did: the freaking cord is only 2 feet long! (No way on God's green earth to plug this baby into our 8600 down under the table.) We just tried it on the iBook, too, and that is definitely a tight fit. Possible, but tight.

The question of having slack in the cable so you can flick the mouse around is relevant, because this mouse, like every other Apple mouse we have ever tried, doesn't move nearly as quickly as just about any 3rd-party device. What we want to know is, why? By "quickly" we mean that with our XLR8 scrolling mouse, for example, a very small sideways motion sends the cursor flying across the screen. With the Apple Pro mouse, we quickly run out of desktop space and have to resort to the "whisk, whisk" method of mousing. [Yes, of course the Mouse control panel is set to the highest speed! -- JHF]

We haven't had a chance to check out the vaunted accuracy of this input device yet, and that may prove to be a very fine thing. But how can we make the cursor move faster? (Is there a shareware app that speeds up mice?) And why in the name of all that's Apple didn't they give us at least another foot of USB cable? Our XLR8 scrolling mouse has enough USB cord to tie up a moose. The overall feel of this optical mouse is excellent, but the cord makes us feel like our belt is too tight. If we can, we just might send it back!