Archive for category Peripherals

Seen above, Apple's new Magic Mouse literally has no buttons, as the front acts as one big track pad.

When Apple released a slew of new products, coincidentally 2 days before the launch of Windows 7, one of the rather interesting products hitting shelves was Apple’s new Magic Mouse. An “improvement” from the previous Mighty Mouse, this new device is much thinner, sits lower to the ground, has Bluetooth connectivity, and has no buttons. You heard me, no physical buttons at all. The real catch is that the whole front of the mouse is a giant track-pad, capable of multi-touch gestures. While I do find this an advancement to the current form of computer interaction, I believe we are not headed in the right direction when it comes to this technology.

The mouse has been in the market for a half century and up until recently with touch-screen tablets and computers, its been the only form of interaction. While it is powerful and flexible, its just too limited. One pair of coordinate points is all that can be used at any given second, greatly reducing possibly productivity. As the market has shown, multi-touch is the next generation of interaction technology, but in what other ways can we talk to our computers?

Its the question that must be answered in the coming years as new products like the “Magic Mouse”, though putting us ahead, only drop us farther behind in the pursuit of new and greater technologies. When you consider a form of interaction, the click-wheel featured on an iPod is a popular one, and with that, I have no doubt in my mind that Apple has the ability to pave the trail of advancement in the development of the next great form of interaction with our everyday computers. It’s a technology that is not questioned often, but as we push further into the future, the mouse will not work.