Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler For Mac OS X is Now Shipping! Download The Free Fully Functional 60 Day Tryout at www.typestyler.com

Poker Mac Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker application such as Full Tilt Poker Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, apple laptops, apple macs, and LCD Monitors side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for new mobile phones, sat nav systems, or MP3 players. The Ciao online shopping community makes searching products easy for you.

The Rumor Mill

Apple's New Click Wheel Mouse

- 2004.09.17

If our usually reliable sources are to be believed, Steve Jobs has finally relented. After the stunning success of the iPod, Jobs now agrees that users may be able to handle more than a single button on a mouse.

In 20 years of selling Macs, Apple has never sold a multi-button mouse, although they are in common use everywhere else in the computer industry. The revolutionary new Click Wheel Mouse™ (too bad Macally already owns the iMouse name) will go beyond anything any current mouse offers.

Not More, Better

Instead of two or three buttons up front, a scroll wheel, and one or two thumb buttons of most contemporary mice, the Click Wheel Mouse (hereafter CWM) is much more elegant. It shares the lozenge shape of the current Pro Mouse, but instead of the entire mouse being a button, Apple engineers have integrated the click wheel technology used in current iPods to create a multifunction controller where the traditional single mouse button went.

The button at the center of the click wheel is used just like a traditional mouse button, and users can move their fingers around the wheel itself to scroll up and down - just as the iPod's wheel lets users navigate menus.

The creative genius of the CWM is the four click buttons incorporated into the wheel, which can be used to scroll up, down, right, or left in the current window by default - or programmed in the new Mouse system preference to move a single cell within a spreadsheet or perhaps a single pixel in a graphics program.

Or they can be programmed to do pretty much anything you can do with a mouse or keyboard, and users will be able to specify different functions for each program they use. In a browser, perhaps the "up" button would be set to "home" instead of "page up" - except for the mouse button in the center, the CWM can be completely software controlled.

Unlike many modern mice, the CWM is neither right- nor left-handed.

The CWM will be available in both USB and Bluetooth versions, and it will only be available as an accessory. Apple will not bundle the new mouse with any current computer.

What Next?

Steve Jobs has often looked to past success to find a model for the future. The original iMac was based on the all-in-one design practically perfected with the earliest Macs, but with a 15" color display instead of a tiny 9" b&w one. The success of the iPod (and the failure of the display-on-a-ball iMac to sell as well as the original) inspired the G5 iMac. And now the iPod inspires a mouse.

What next, a compact, affordable modular Mac to repeat the success of the Quadra 630, compete with low-end Windows PCs, and bring OS X, the iApps, and Apple AV technology (the 630 supported a TV tuner!) to the masses?

Nah, never happen. Apple really doesn't want to increase unit sales, let alone market share, or they would have done that years ago.

- Anne Onymus

Recent Rumor Mills

Links for the Day

Recent Content on Low End Mac

Recent Deals

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2009 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
  LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
  Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
  Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
  PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
  Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.

Custom Search

Amazon.com

Navigation

Used Mac Dealers
Apple History
Video Cards
Email Lists

Favorite Sites

MacSurfer
MacMinute
MacInTouch
MyAppleMenu
InfoMac
Macs Only!
The Mac Observer
Accelerate Your Mac
RetroMacCast
PB Central
MacWindows
The Vintage Mac
   Museum
DealMac
DealsOnTheWeb
Mac2Sell
ramseeker
Mac Driver Museum
JAG's House
System 6 Heaven
System 7 Today
the pickle's Low-End
   Mac FAQ
Abandonware
   Petition
Mac vs. PC Info

Affiliates

The Apple Store
Mac Connection
B&H
MacMall
TechRestore
ExperCom
Crucial Memory
batteries.com

Advertise

All of our advertising is handled by BackBeat Media. For price quotes and advertising information, please contact at BackBeat Media (646-546-5194). This number is for advertising only.

Open Link

Problems viewing this page with Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6? It works fine in other browsers, including IE 7. We recommend Firefox for those using Windows, as it is standards based and more secure than IE 6 (and earlier). More LEM visitors use Firefox than any other browser.