Apple Magic Mouse in Logic Studio – Logic Pro, Ableton and Pro Tools 8

Before the turn of this decade, using the Mighty Mouse, I got used to it and enjoyed the trackball/sphere/nipple on the front. It was wonderful to be able to scroll up and down in the arrangement windows and Piano Roll. About time given how long scroll wheels had been available in other mice at that point. With the Mighty Mouse, you can not only scroll up and down, but with the ball you can move from side to side or even 360 degrees, again very useful in Logic windows when you want to quickly scroll through a section of a song to another without having to waste time zooming or fiddling with the bars at the bottom of the window. Shame the thing only lasted 6 months before the ball broke or clogged and you had to buy a new one or figure out how to get the dirt out!

Apple hasn’t exactly had a great track record with mice. Remember that horrible circular thing that came out with the first generation of iMacs? You never knew where you were about to track before you moved your mouse! Then the no button generation, no button because Steve Jobs doesn’t like the way buttons look! We got by at the time, but now I can’t imagine life without a right click!

Now we have the Magic Mouse. I stuffed one into my Christmas stocking so I’ve had it for a while now and between you and me, it was the toy I was most excited to get out and play with.

It doesn’t fill your hand like a Mighty Mouse; I know this is a problem for some, but after a few hours, I got used to it. Tracking is supposed to be more accurate; It probably is, but I’ve never had a problem with the Mighty Mouse tracking. Scrolling is very similar, except you no longer have the problematic physical ball that can only be good. It’s nice how you can scroll from pretty much anywhere in the top half of the mouse area instead of having to place your finger in the exact same spot as before. Two-finger swiping in Safari is great; no more following through to that back button to see the front page after reading an article. Getting around in Snow Leopard is joyous; I think they call it impulse. Simply put, the mouse knows how fast your finger is moving and when you remove it, the page keeps scrolling and gradually stops depending on how fast your finger moved. SLIPPER! Unfortunately this doesn’t happen on Leopard unless I’ve missed something.

Just a quick note about MagicPrefs: it’s where you can set all sorts of deeper features for your Magic Mouse. For example, I set CLICK with two fingers to go directly to spaces, TAP with three fingers to expose all windows, etc. Unfortunately, when I’m scrolling through my Mac and apps at the rate it does, I tend to inadvertently put my fingers on my mouse, so I’m going into spaces, exposing the desktop, seeing all the app windows, etc. when I don’t want to and that’s very annoying. Perhaps I could train myself to use the Magic Mouse more delicately. For now, I have to disable all of these funky features, as it’s more important that it function as a useful mouse than it does trickery that I can live without for now.

So the question is: will the Magic Mouse make your life easier in Logic Studio? And the answer is that he will do what Mighty Mouse did and a bunch of extra fun stuff outside of Logic Pro/Studio, but it should last a lot longer than 6 months!