They've been pulling this "LOOK AT US!! WE'RE GENIUSES FOR THIS MARGINAL IMPROVEMENT ON AN EXISTING PRODUCT!!!!11eleven" for years, now, and their customers buy it wholesale.

http://www.apple.com/mightymouse/#mouse

Well I didn't see *you* inventing it...

That's because it's STUPID.

For ten bucks, I'd actually buy it. If it worked with PCs, that is.

Not only do they have this great new mouse, but they've also added Tiger to minis and doubled the RAM at the same price I paid for no Tiger and half the RAM.

Way to go Apple, flipping the bird to all of your early adopters.

Sounds like a good idea to me, too. I have one of those Intellimice with the scroll-wheel that also moves sideways, but a mini trackball would be much more useful.

So is it stupid, or are you jealous that you don't have one?

Well I want one but the whole thing looks like a vagina complete with scrollable clit and squeezable mons-pubis. :-)

Yeah Muppet, I'd like some money back from Gateway on the 386 25MHz PC I bought in '92. I mean, the nerve of them to come out with faster PC's with more memory and better graphics, for cheaper than I paid! I guess us early adopters have it tough.

In a year I can handle. In a handful of months.. that's just rude, man.

So do you want one because it's useful, or because it looks like an anatomically correct version of everything that's missing from your Barbie doll?

It does work with PCs, but it won't have any clever software functions then.

But is the scroll ball mechanical or optical? The tech specs are not clear. I wouldn't like it if the scroll ball was mechanical -- mechanical balls too easily get gunged up and stop working properly.

Now I want one, too.

A year after it came out, or a year after you bought it?

Mark -

A year after it comes out, I think, is a reasonable amount of time to wait before doubling all the specs -- if you want to avoid pissing off everybody you just sold one to. :-)

You have a Mac Mini, right? You mean that thing is only a few months old? Wasn't the latest Mac convention thingy just a couple of months ago? And doesn't Stevie introduce new stuff at the convention? And wasn't the convention where he introduced the Mac Mini last year?

That's the thing with hardware, though. It's a bit of a cliche, but it's obsolete and overpriced the second you buy it. If you've not figured that out by now perhaps you're in the wrong profession.

Mark -

I'm pretty sure Mac Mini isn't a year old, but I'd have to check.

Mat -

Absolutely, but if you bought a reasonably expensive device and two months later the vendor was offering double the specs at the same price, you'd be annoyed, too.

I understand that you're cranky with your idiot girlfriend and her three extra kids, but chill a little.

Steve Jobs: Guys, what the fuck is going on with the new mini's? I've heard they're all boxed up and ready to go, why no announcement?

Marketing: Uh, Steve, uh, Muppet is not ready yet.

I never argued that I was being RATIONAL, just that I'm annoyed. That's perfectly valid. :-)

I'm always buying kit and then a month later seeing the same thing or better available at a fraction of the cost, but it's either that or be miles behind the curve. It's life. Learn to deal with it, or stop buying stuff the minute it comes out...

50$ for mouse? What does it do apart from clicking/scrolling, does it help me get laid too?

The prices of Mac and its accessories will make sure that it will never be adopted in mass market.

I just paid $90 not too long ago for a mouse. The new Logitech laser optical/wireless dealie. Best mouse I've ever had. You can use it on your pantleg and it's as responsive there as my previous optical trackball.

"What does it do apart from clicking/scrolling, does it help me get laid too?"

It's from APPLE. OF COURSE it will help get you laid.

Sheesh.

Don't get me started on Apple, their products are somewhat eyepleasing, but they make some horrible mistakes when it comes to software design. iTunes is about the most aggrivating peace of software I have ever used. I don't know why people like Joel like the iPod so much when the software needed to interface with it is total garbage.

Time for one example. If you have a song on your shuffle/iPod and you accidentally delete it out of your library, the logical thing to do would be to plug in your ipod to transfer it back to your computer, but lo and behold, the fucking software automatically deletes the song off of your ipod because your removed it from your library. There's no option to turn this shit 'feature' off either. How is this doing what the user expects?

Wow, apple really pisses me off. And the fact that people love them makes it worse for me. I'm with you muppet, they finally decide that a one button mouse is stupid and now people are going to think they are geniuses for having a mouse with more than one function.

I was baffled once that my girlfriend's iPod (I don't own one) played my tracks in the wrong order.

It turns out that rather than the "alphabetical by file name" that I'm used to, it does in order by album, an then track # from the ID3 tags. All the MP3s were from the same book, and all had the same album name. So it played track 1 from disc 1, track 1 from disc 2, track 1 from disc 3 and track 1 from disc 4, then track 2 from disc 1, and so on.

Took me forever to figure this out, and then I had to go in and re-tag my files so each one would have a unique album name, and those would be in order.

It's doing what the user expects because the iPod is intended to be portable extension of your music library on your Mac, and not an external hard drive.

While this may not be what YOU expect, it's consistent with their design philosophy.

Now, I'm not arguing that you shouldn't be able to turn that behavior off...

I spent 105$ for my wireless keyboard/mouse combo a year back. It's worth it. Did you read that it's WIRELESS? That it includes mouse AND keyboard?

50$ for normal wired mouse, you gotta be kidding me!

"There's no option to turn this shit 'feature' off either. How is this doing what the user expects?"

Uh, I'm pretty sure I've had songs on my iPod that weren't in my iTunes library, and iTunes refrained from deleting them. You can set the iPod/iTunes interaction to be manual. Then, it doesn't do anything unless you tell it to.

"and it's as responsive there as my previous optical trackball."

How exactly does an optical trackball work?

"I don't know why people like Joel like the iPod so much when the software needed to interface with it is total garbage."

Joel raves about the iPod because it is glorious proof that Joel's UI design philosophy is right. FWIW, I've had a Creative Zen and I've loved it, in fact, all things being different (including price) I would still take a Zen over an iPod.

"I was baffled once that my girlfriend's iPod (I don't own one) played my tracks in the wrong order."

And yet you're the one person who reliably responds to my anti-Apple flamebaiting. :P

Also, I'll only buy a wireless mouse/desktop combo once I can get a gyromouse for reasonable money - then I can properly surf from my couch. I've used a gyromouse at work, it feels slightly wooden, but adequate.

An optical trackball has an optical sensor and a bunch of little dots on the ball.

I once had a mouse that had buttons on its sides. Hated it.

The problem was, I often pick up the mouse to re-position it on the mouse pad. I work on a desk with limited space for mousing.

With the two buttons, EVERY time I picked the mouse up (with my thumb and fourth finger) I was clicking both buttons. Annoying as hell.

Now, the little rolly on top looks interesting. And now they can keep their 'single button mouse' esthetics, but ACTUALLY have two buttons on their mouse.

Still, unless you can disable the side-buttons, I'm not going to like it.

Now don't get me wrong, in my opinion apple can make some seriously "eye-pleasing" softwares, and I wouldn't mind one of those powerbooks. But let's face it, who is going to spend $5000 on a powerbook when an $600 Acer from best buy does the trick. And with a mac, you can't even run Half-Life or Excel. I practically live and breathe in Excel. And I'm not kidding. I have a very specialized diet where I can only eat Nestle CRUNCH brand ice cream bars, baked potatoes, and hard boiled eggs. Each morning at 4:45 AM I arise from bed and log into Excel. The macro I have created will tell me how many Nestle CRUNCH ice cream bars I have left in my cooler, and how many eggs. If the eggs get below half dozen, I am alerted with a "pop up" window I have created. Then I go out to the store and purchase another dozen. When I return I eat one Nestle CRUNCH ice cream bar and log back into Excel to log my consumption. The "pivot table" feature allows me to compare the number of ice cream bars to eggs. Usually the eggs are hard boiled, but once in a while my sister in law will make me an omelet. Technically omeletes are not in my diet because I am still not certain how to represent an omelete as an excel column. Will apple's new squeezable mouse help me with my life? I didn't think so.

I loved my Creative Jukebox until it fell one day and the HD died. It was folder based, and played songs in normal windows alphabetical order. The only difference was that windows considers "1" to be the same as "01" where it doesn't, but that's no big deal.

The batteries were also normal AA batteries and could be easily replaced. It actually broke earlier - for some reason it wouldn't charge the batteries, but it was so easy to replace them, and the batteries themselves were rechargeable, so we just kept on using it.

The damned iPod battery died, and short of going to eBay to get a replacement for $30 that will probably die again in 2 years, we have no recourse.

John V,

This option isn't available if you have an iPod Shuffle.