By Roman Loyola
November 3, 2009

People have strong opinions about computer mice-after all, a mouse (along with a keyboard) physically forms a personal connection between you and your Mac. Apple‘s new Magic Mouse has a creative new design that, upon first impression, you’ll either love or hate.

The Bluetooth Magic Mouse has no visible buttons. It is a two-button mouse, but there’s no visible separation between right and left. I’m right handed, and I use my middle finger for right click, and my index finger for left click, and in my five hours of use, I never accidentally clicked the wrong button.

The buttons actually click; when you press down, you can see and feel the button depress, and there’s an audible click that sounds authentic. You don’t have to take your finger off the mouse to double click. When I simply rested my hand on the mouse, however, I clicked it.

The Magic Mouse has only two buttons. There are no side buttons, like on the Mighty Mouse (now called the Apple Mouse), nor is there a scroll wheel or scroll ball button. In fact, the Exposé or Dashboard functions found in the Apple/Mighty Mouse are no longer in the Magic Mouse.

Perhaps the most innovative feature about the Magic Mouse is the Multi-Touch support, which effectively replaces a scroll wheel or scroll ball. To scroll a document up, down, left or right, you glide your finger on the mouse in the appropriate direction. Your fingers don’t even have to be at the top of the mouse; you can swipe the area just above the logo if you want, and the scrolling works.

The two-finger swiping, however, wasn’t so easy for me to perform. Two-finger swiping can be used in iPhoto, for example, to move between photos. I found it difficult to keep the Magic Mouse still as I swiped two fingers left or right.

The Magic Mouse has a plastic top, and aluminum bottom with two plastic rails. Moving the mouse on my desktop with and without a mouse pad wasn’t smooth at all-it was a grating sensation.

Below is a ten-second video of the Magic Mouse System Preference, which has built-in video tutorials on how to use Multi-Touch.

Following the Magic Mouse’s launch, Apple has also released software updates for Leopard and Snow Leopard to support its Multi-Touch features.