I got to play with a Magic Mouse for about a week before I had to hand it back (to the original reviewer, tee hee), but I’m still not completely sure if I want to pick one up for myself. I love the flat design, the intuitive (if meager) multi-touch, and the Bluetooth responsiveness…but at the end of the day, I’m still too scared that Apple will never really capitalize on this cool piece of tech.

Comfort
I was actually almost daring the mouse to give me some sort of hand ache. The thing lies so flat against the desk and is so small that you actually palm it instead of grip it. However, in my week of use, about 5-8 hours a day, the Magic Mouse was nothing but spectacularly comfortable.
I have medium-sized hands, and they’re used to holding a Logitech G9 gaming mouse at my desktop, but the Magic Mouse only took a day or so to get used to. Clicking is satisfying and easy, and I actually like the way you right click (lift your index finger up, and click along the right side with your middle finger). Strangely enough, it reminds me of the way cats do their business, but that’s another story altogether.

Hardware
The Magic Mouse really feels like a premium accessory. The build doesn’t feel cheap, and as I mentioned earlier, it’s satisfying to *click*. At least 75% of the top surface is touch-sensitive, and the entire front half of the mouse is one giant button. Along the bottom you’ll find the battery hatch (stick ye the AA batteries in here), power switch, and the laser tracking eye.
The whole mouse slides along two plastic rails that are fine on a mouse pad, but just a little too rough on my sorta-wood IKEA desk. I’d have preferred if the rails were made of rubber or silicone or whatever is stuck onto the bottom of my Logitech G9.

Software
Here’s where the Magic Mouse gets a little disappointing (but a little less so with a bit of modding). First of all, the default sensitivity on the mouse is absolutely horrific. It positively crawls across my 13″ MacBook screen, and I had to download a free utility called MouseZoom to get any work done.
Left clicking is done on almost any portion of the mouse, except for the right-most side. A single finger click on the right side is a right click. One finger swipes activate momentum scrolling and two finger swipes to the left and right function as back and forward, respectively.
There is no middle click, no gesture to trigger Expose — just the features I’ve listed above. The iPhone has had a multi-touch screen for about three years now, and Apple still hasn’t taken full advantage of the technology with the default applications, and I’m worried that buying a Magic Mouse right now might very well lock me into a cool, but essentially featureless little accessory for a while to come. There are some cool little 3rd party utilities on the horizon, but I’m wary of cluttering my Mac workspace up with even more processes. I wanted a nice, simple set-up, and trying to juice the Magic Mouse for everything it’s worth might well make things more complicated.

It’s the features you leave out?
I’ve read just a little bit on the subject of Apple design, and it seems to me that they’re just as conservative as they are revolutionary. I love the iPhone interface and I love how it changed the smartphone landscape, but what kind of stupid smartphone doesn’t let you change wallpapers, edit the auto-suggestion dictionary, or create shortcuts to toggle the wireless radios?
One big reason I’m scared of the Magic Mouse is that Apple might have a ridiculously plain vision of the technology: “here, public, take a mouse with all of two multi-touch gestures and get used to the idea for a few years…then maybe we’ll talk.”
The thing is, I believe I’m ready right now for some extra features and smarter customization, but it just isn’t being offered.
I haven’t called this a review because I’m still not really sure about what I think of the Magic Mouse, despite having thought about the purchase for a good three weeks now. At the end of the day, I still think the Magic Mouse is an amazing design accomplishment, but it’s really all up to Apple to provide the back-end support to make it a practical accessory that is worth $70. As it stands right now, buying a Magic Mouse feels more like an investment in multi-touch technology rather than an actual accessory purchase.

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The Magic Mouse is available at your local Apple Store or Best Buy for around 70 dollars.

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