I am somehow doubting that Apple's Mighty Mouse is going to be a raging success. Even at the Apple stores I've been to lately in Australia and the US, Microsoft and Logitech mice seem to be getting more loving than Apple's new mouse. I'm no marketing person, but I think that Apple needs to give this product a different name. Mighty Mouse may be a good nickname or something catchy to use in advertising copy, but I don't think it works as the official name. Even I felt a little embarrassed asking for the Mighty Mouse.
Other than the name, it's a pretty nifty mouse. I was worried that the scroll wheel/button was way too small to use effectively - but that hasn't been a problem at all. It seems to allow for some very precise scrolling. And it is very nice to be able to do horizontal scrolling - especially in the Finder and applications like Photoshop.
My scroll button is set up so that clicking on it opens and closes the Dashboard. For me at least, this has made the Dashboard a lot more accessible and I may use it more.
I wasn't so sure how the idea of invisible left and right buttons would work - but it hardly took anytime to get used to. Clicking on the top right area of the mouse is the same as a regular click (well for most people, see below for my left-handed experience), clicking the top left area is a left click.
The weirdest thing about the Mighty Mouse are the side squeeze buttons. Maybe in a few more days, squeezing the sides of a mouse will be second nature to me, but it still seems kind of odd. Initially it was quite awkward - what if I don't squeeze the two side buttons exactly simultaneously - will something bad happen? (the answer to that question is no) The squeezing movement is different - the only analogy is like giving somebody a bad handshake where the hand doesn't open properly. The necessary pressure would greater than a dead fish handshake but the firmness of a good firm handshake wouldn't be necessary - not that this would break the mouse.
I have Mighty Mouse set so that the side buttons open Exposé - something which will make this a lot more accessible and useful for me - the idea of using Exposé by function keys or screen corners never ever worked well for me. But it's also possible to set the side buttons - or left click or right click or scroll button - to do anything else - such as open the desktop, any application or an Automator workflow.
Now for my left-handed story. I'm a left hander, and prefer to do my mousing with my left hand, using the forefinger for most of the clicking. This means setting the buttons the other way around from the default - so that right button is the main one and the left button brings up the contextual menus. Like most left-handers I need to survive in the right-handed world. In my current job, the shared reference and circulation computers have right-handed settings - and I am able to use them without too many hassles. That said, on my own computers at home and work, I always do left-handed mousing - I work faster and think more clearly and am happier this way.
Anyway, when I first tried using Mighty Mouse I thought it was badly broken. There seemed no way getting a regular click - everything seemed to open the contextual menus. After some tweaking, I got it so it worked as a regular right-handed mouse held in my left hand - the most annoying and confusing of all mousing worlds for me. Then I realized what was going on. I unplugged the Apple mouse and returned its predecessor, a fairly basic Logitech two-button mouse with a scroll wheel. With that mouse plugged in, I changed the Logitech mouse settings back from left-handed style mousing to the default right-handed settings. When I plugged the Mighty Mouse back and set its settings to left-handed mousing, everything worked as expected.
