See how they run. See how they run.
They all ran after the farmer's wife,
Who cut off their tails with a carving knife,
Did you ever see such a sight in your life,
As three blind mice?
Three blind mice. Without tails. Someone was responsible for this mutilation, horrible amputation. And because of this, I'm disoriented. Dis-orient: Loss of locus, loss of alignment, position, etc., etc., etc. Disoriented by dismemberment. Dis-member: Loss of limb, loss of a thing in a group. So 'disoriented by dismemberment' would mean a loss of alignment caused by a loss of a member.
I'm talking about Apple's Magic Mouse. I went to my department the other day to print something, and I see these nice-looking white things all alone next to the nice white keyboards. Not attached. Nice. Now I'm all for any form of freedom. It is how I am supposed to function with this freedom is what disturbs me.
I have used Microsoft's wireless mouse long time ago. That was okaaaay. I mean there were still distinctions on left and right-click and scroll. (And switch hands without confusion). This however... such smooth contours, I had to google to learn how to use it: one finger for scrolling, two fingers for navigating...now the details are so... you know what (don't blame me, blame the tech writers who churn out this stuff). A 360 degree scroll is different from swipe, thank you. Wonder who thought of implementing this gesture imitation in technology for better usability, baah don't tell me, I can quote the paper right now, shame on me.
Anyway, this thing sucks. I never needed to reassign right to left functionality anytime (I mean for the Microsoft wireless mice), but now I'm forced to for the 'Magic' mouse. Because the bloody thing has a f#$%^&* smooth body like... whatever. 'Ambidextrous' design apparently just means it fits in both hands and it feels like home.
Now what I did: I moved the mice to different laptops to see if they worked away from paired devices. HAHA. It does, but only if Discoverable or some such option is enabled in your System Preferences. I could be wrong here but I didn't have the patience to prove this by repeated experimentation and higher sample size. I don't care enough. I wasn't moved enough. Neither to find supporting evidence nor oppositions.
After using this device for a limited time, the first impression of how 'nice' it looks or how 'clean' the desks look seems kind of irrelevant. Nice looking things just get you lost. And make you spend more time to print that paper that was due 10 minutes ago. I am superficial, I like the idea of wireless and all, no clutter et cetera, et cetera, but forcing me to spend a minute more on something than what I'm supposed to spend - that is - um.. unforgivable.
Give me back the tailed mice. With the distinctive shape. Or forget the tail, keep the shape. Us laggards in technology need the old.... or 'real' new stuff. Not amputations disguised as development.
