Mighty Mouse design flaws

Since switching to the new iMac I’ve been using the Apple Mighty Mouse. Things I like about it: looks great; lightweight; the scroll ball is brilliant.

Two problems, however…

1. Right clicking

This is a zero-button mouse but in theory you can produce left and right clicks by pressing the appropriate side of the device. The problem is that it’s fairly easy to get "false lefts" when what you actually mean to do is get a right click. Most common manifestation of this: when you right-click on an icon in the Dock hoping to get quick access to the item’s Dock menu and you inadvertently end up switching apps. Switching apps is an annoying bottleneck that can rob you of precious seconds through disk-churning when you’re using a memory-starved machine.

2. You can’t reposition the mouse during drags

Another consequence of the zero-button design: if you initiate a drag and reach the limit of possible movement (for example, the edge of the desk, the edge of the mouse mat, the edge of your cup of coffee, whatever) the standard thing to do would be to lift the mouse up off the desk with the button still depressed, reposition it so as to make extra space, and then continue the drag.

This isn’t possible with the Mighty Mouse because it has no buttons. As soon as you lift the mouse up off the desk you effectively release the pressure on the mouse body causing Mac OS X to think your intention is to release the clicking operation. As a result the dragged object ends up getting dropped in mid-drag.

The only workarounds are to head up to the menu bar and stop the drag up there (this at least allows you to avoid dropping the object somewhere undesirable), buy a bigger desk, or use some kind of Jedi mind trick to convince the mouse that you’re still pressing the button even when you lift it up off the desk.

Of these two problems, the first one is probably the easiest to improve in the next rev of the Mighty Mouse. The second one, I can’t see any way of doing it without abandoning the zero-button design, which would be a step backwards in terms of elegance. I guess I’ll just have to make more room for my mouse.