Non-Apple Buttonless Mouse

MX pointed us to a story about a new buttonless mouse. It's visually quite unique, but they say it's not the ideal gaming device for you real-time-gaming folks. But hey, points for style. I've been using this optical cordless logitech (Blatant ThinkGeek linkage) on my desktop for awhile, although I'm not sure how well it'd work for gaming. When I play, I still use a MS Optical mouse. Whatever anyone thinks about their business practices and operating systems, they sure seem to always sell good mice.

Comments

Help desk

[jACL]

User: My mouse doesn't have any buttons? How do I click?
Helpdesk: Lean left.
User: What, the buttons are in the seat now?
Helpdesk: No, lean the mouse left.
User: But how do I move it around then?
Helpdesk: Er...put it back.
User: What if I have to click and drag?
Helpdesk: Hang on, let me just open up a hardware service ticket.

Not enough memory ...

[NWT]

Warning: Can't create a new thread (errno 11). If you are not out of available memory, you can consult the manual for a possible OS-dependent bug in /home/sites/site84/web/class_db.php on line 7

Hehe,it seems their webserver is running on a mouse, too :-)

Having looked at the mouse...

[Tsar]

It appears to me that the mouse still has left-right buttons, but they're in the underside of the mouse body, so you have to tilt the entire body to activate a button by pressing the appropriate corner harder against the desk. Cool, but like the man said, you lose some fine control and quick response time.

Mice and gaming.

[jidar]

Yeah you definately wouldn't want to be using a mouse like that for gaming. In fact, even using an optical mouse isn't a good thing if you are competing at the world level.

What you will find if you look into the Pro gamer community (this might sound like I'm kidding, but it really exists: http://www.shackes.com) is that most of them do not like optical mice. They simply don't have high enough sampling rate in most cases. If you turn fast enough with an optical then tend to freak out for a second resulting in your player staring at the floor or sky and spinning. Also, the movements and physics of using an optical are somewhat different. For instance the 'flick' motion that a lot of players have mastered doesn't translate well to an optical.

Opticals are nice because of their longevity, and low maintenance, but if you're seriuos then ball is still king.

Re:Mice and gaming.

[debrain]

There is the genuine issue that your parent message brought up - the sampling rate on optical mice is too low to adequately map the expected motions to interpreted motions, and hence the human user performs operations that the hardware does not interpret as the human expected or anticipated.

The obvious consequence of this is a sharp flick to the right or left which leads to a Quake 3 character staring at the ground for no apparent reason, and subsequent death and loss of the competition. This can be compensated for with extremely, and I mean extremely, high sensitivity, in the order such that 0.5 cm corresponds to your screen resolution in terms of a desktop.

However, that being said, the human user does not have the physical coordination to operate at that level. As such, until optical resolutions are significantly higher, users of track balls and ball mice will have superior granularity and better correspondence between the expected behavior of the hardware and the actual behaviour of the hardware, irregardless of the skill, training, and habits of the users.

The advantage is in the correspondence between expected behaviour and actual behaviour, it being much better with track balls and ball mice (which are optical, but in a different way) than it is with optical mice.

(Just a note - have a look at trackball patterns; it is not a uniform pattern but a miss-mash pattern with form following function)

Having been one of, and knowing some of, the better Unreal Tournament players in my time, the differences, in not playability but infinitisemal advantages that lead to domination over a long enough time period, are well known and examined. Optical mice do not require a very long time period to assert their inferiority. ;)

Microsoft's mice

[stevie-boy]

Whatever anyone thinks about their business practices and operating systems, they sure seem to always sell good mice.

I replaced the hideous 'pebble' supplied with my iMac with an MS optical wheel mouse, it's probably the best £30 I've spent on computing kit.

The Classic MacOS drivers for the extra button and scrolly wheel work without incident and MacOSX has support built in.

my thoughts exactly.

[gimpboy]

Whatever anyone thinks about their business practices and operating systems, they sure seem to always sell good mice.

i say the same about nike. who cares if small asian children work 16 hours a day for almost nothing-they sure make good shoes. really though it's called having principles. if you think a company is bad, for whatever reason, you shouldnt do business with that company-not just the part of the company you disagree with.

mod me down if you want, but i personally dont appreciate the hypocrisy.

Re:my thoughts exactly.

[JWhitlock]

i say the same about nike. who cares if small asian children work 16 hours a day for almost nothing-they sure make good shoes. really though it's called having principles. if you think a company is bad, for whatever reason, you shouldnt do business with that company-not just the part of the company you disagree with.

WHOA! How about a little perspective, huh? Is Microsoft doing anything on the level of exploiting third-world children? Sure, they've been convicted of operating an illegal monopoly, but the only folks that got hurt were those trying to sell software of their own. Is this the principle you are trying to follow - fair competition in a regulated market? Does that mean your principles lead you to buy third-party software? Or is your principle that software should be free, and thus you don't care about those other businesses that were shut out? I must admit, I'm not sure what you are talking about, and I can't wrap my brain around any principle that lumps Microsoft's "business practices and operating systems" with Nike's treatment of third-world workers. Or, are you commenting that Nike's new initiatives to help third-world workers are comparable to Microsoft's new initiatives to fix security problems?

Personally, I'm quite happy about Microsoft's business practices - they resulted in cheap PCs (every PC didn't have to meet IBM's specs, just Microsoft's) and angry programmers, which directly resulted in the Linux operating system. Linux may be putting a free operating system in every computer, but Microsoft put those computers on people's desks - they are like the ugly booster rockets that put the shuttle in orbit.

BTW, horrible link to NIKEWORKERS.ORG. Like your comments, it assumes everything (that you agree that Nike exploits third-world workers) and explains nothing (no examples of Nike's exploitation). In fact, the only stories in the ABOUT section were old articles about paid endorsers that didn't know about the problems, and the only links in the NEWS section were about Reebok! This would have been a better link.

Lovin' Apple's

[piecewise]

Apple's buttonless, (beautiful), optical mouse has been great for me. They say Macs are more productive computers because of the user interface.. I agree.. but I must admit I wasted a lot of time originally just looking at this thing.. it's weird.. the inside of it appears to "float". You can't tell this in pictures but in 'real life' it seems to float. It reminds me of mercury actually, in a sense. The Apple logo inside, especially, floats within it. It's a really great mouse.. and it's connected to a G4 tower, so that ain't bad either!

Wow, I'm talking about *nothing* and I've still developed a paragraph! Much like my english papers. I'm done now...

Microsoft Hardware

[neema]

"Whatever anyone thinks about their business practices and operating systems, they sure seem to always sell good mice."

Difference being is this. Microsoft software is made, mostly, within Microsoft. Microsoft hardware is hardware someone else makes and they just slap on a label onto it.

Microsoft hardware is actually really good, and the support for it is amazing. My optical mouse was tweaking out for some reason, so I called them and they sent me another one by the next day. They didn't require me to send in my old one. It probably didn't cost them much anyway, but it was still a cool gesture.

Re:MS mice

[baptiste]

I have to disagree. While I can't stand MS and the way they behave in the software arena, they can make awesome mice, keyboards, etc. How many of us would give up the wheel? The Intellimouse Explorer 3.0 is hands down the best mouse out there IMHO. It actaully fits my hand, is smooth over any surface, and just has a great 'feel' - plus it looks cool. But even something as plain as a keyboard - their keyboards are still very nice. I always thought shortcut keys on a keyboard were overkill, but now that I use them - I can't live without them (I switch between 2K and Linux and miss the keys when I'm in Linux)

So I agree with Taco - MS can make a sweet mouse.

MS Makes a superior Mouse & Ergonomics

[penguin_nipple]

Ever since I first saw them, I have oned a few MS Optical Mice. For some reason, MS Hardware is damn fine division. I had a faulty Intellimouse Optical, got a new one replaced, no charge. Had the smaller white one faulty, replaced, no charge. I now own 2 of the small, one of the large Grey ones...love my technical referrals? I also own the Logitech cordless optical mouse and cordless keyboard. First off , Optical is the way to go. Secondly, MS is good at hardware. Thirdly, Support is great for both W2K and Linux, no hassles anywhere. Except for programming those extra buttons for the logitech keyboard in Linux. Oh well, maybe someday I'll figure out the keycodes and write a little hack to make the buttons work.

I would like to try this no button mouse, when I am working (coding) I occassionally get serious serious hand pain (no jokes..lol).

It will last for days and is quite painful. All of us in tech jobs, spending long hours at computers should take a serious look at ergonomics. Also, your employer should pay for upgrading your chair, keyboard and mouse if you feel pain with your current setup. It's your health, your future, hell, go out and buy what you want and throw the bill at your boss if you're in pain (not literally throw it, figuratively). I would in fact suggest sitting down with your employer and going over ergonomics and how it can effect employee productivity.

Maybe some of these links would be helpful:

Design/Layout
Ergonomics - A Practical Guide
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and Computer Related Repetitive Strain Injuries

I am gonna buy one, the tiny little muscles used in your hands to click the mice buttons place a huge strain on your arm over a period of time. It may not bother you now, but let's talk in 20 years....

Re:MS Makes a superior Mouse & Ergonomics

[IceFox]

Before you blast me, here me out. I had wrist problems and tried a number of different mice. I have a little collection of mice in storage now. You know what one did more (for my wrists that is) then any other one? A trackball. And when you think about it you can relize why. With a normal mouse you mover your wrist all around, but with a trackball you use your thumb for everything. This drematicly reduces the amount of stress on your wrists. Granted it took me two weeks to be able to master it and another month to get my gimp skills back, but it was worth it. Unfortunetly for you lefties it is a little harder to find a trackball, but give it a shot.

As for keyboard I ended up getting a Kinesis, but that is for another post.

As for desk I built my own to match my height so my wrists are in the least amount of pain. (90 angle at elbo)

-Benjamin Meyer

Re:MS mice

[Anonymous Coward]

While the scroll wheel at first seemed like a great idea, I found out that it is a real ergonomics disaster. I started getting nasty carpal tunnel syndrome symptoms after using the wheel too much, and went back to using the Apple Pro Mouse that came with my Mac. No more unnatural and highly repetitive finger motions...

Re:MS mice

[MattRog]

You can 'click' the mousewheel. Acts as a perfect 3rd button if you change it in the IntelliPoint software. I'll agree with Taco as well -- MS Mice Rox0r!

Focus, people! :-)

[seldolivaw]

Taco posts a story about a new mouse, and includes a one-line comment mentioning MS Mice. Result: a thread of replies almost entirely about Microsoft mice, Microsoft hardware, and MS's business practices. And 3 about the actual mouse :-)

The Mouse

[90XDoubleSide]

Since i haven't seen a single post that was on topic, i'd like to actually talk about the mouse.

Obviously I haven't used one, but I don't see what problem they're trying to solve with this leaning instead of clicking thing... it seems to me that that would be even worse for your wrist after repetitive use, and judging from the other mice on the companies website, they're not exactly masters of ergonomics or industrial design.

This does bring up a question I've wondered about, though; if Apple offers their own 2-button scroll wheel mouse, what will it look like. The last time we heard rumors that they were designing one was back during the days of their hockey-puck mouse, so the mouse would have had the fruit and ice design scheme. I must say Apple's current no button clickable mouse is beautiful, even though I use my Logitech Cordless Optical Mouse most of the time, I keep it on my desk for the prettiness factor (the Logitech isn't bad though, it almost perfectly matches the colors of a graphite G4 tower, it just can't hold a candle to a translucent black oval floating above your desk ;).

Of course, there's no guarantee Apple will ever make a two-button mouse, but I don't think you can rule out the possibility that they might start at least including them with Power Macs. Apple has admitted that many of their customers need the extra button and scroll wheel, particularly gamers; when Apple furnished Power Macs for QuakeCon, they came with 3rd party two button mice, and you'll wonder how you ever used the Mac OS X Finder with a one-button mouse once you switch.

So I think there is plenty of motivation, although they would probably keep the present mouse on the iMacs (the iMacs now actually use a special mouse with a white bubble instead of a black one, ditto for the keyboard). So my question is what would it look like? Hopefully nothing like this one from Green, in form or function, but how do you make a mouse as stunning as the current one with buttons and a scroll wheel breaking up the design? Would be a very different design, but the new towers might see a very new design sometime soon as well, and they might take that opportunity to switch keyboard and mouse designs ont the pro products as well, after all, is Apple going to use the same style they've had since the G3 when they start making 5th gen towers.