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Comments: 255 +- Hardware: Apple vs. Microsoft Multi-Touch Mouse Comparison on Monday November 23, @10:53AM
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blee37 writes "This is a side-by-side comparison of the Apple and Microsoft multi-touch mice. It includes video demonstrations of using the mice in applications, first-person shooters and 3D manipulation. It also has new photos of the internals of all the mice."
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Touch screens and the like (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem with this, like with many other touch screen like devices, is that you don't get physical feedback when you're clicking or scrolling or doing anything. There's a reason why you actually need to push the mouse button a little bit so it clicks. Not much, but it actually feels like a click. Keyboard presses need to be the same way too - you need the feedback.
Another example is the scroll in mouses. My Logitech MX Revolution mouse has both seamless and non-seamless mode that you can activate for different apps. Seamless mode was activated by default for IE and I had to take it off, because mouse scroll also needs to "tick" and feel back when you're scrolling. The Apple video shows that you can scroll faster by moving your finger rapidly - guess what, you can do that with a normal scroll too, just by rapidly firing the scroller to either direction (the logitech software actually releases the tick for a bit so it works even better)
Other thing to consider is how quickly the touch area gets dirty and less functional. I sometimes like to eat a great three story cheese bacon hamburger filled with majonese, chipotle ketchup and delicious cheese with deep fried french fries, topped with a cold beer and chocolate ice cream with strawberries and chocolate dipping. Lets face it, the touch area is going to get dirty. Will it function the same way after that and can you clean it as easily?
Re:Touch screens and the like (Score:4, Interesting)
Onsidering my iPhone is easy to clean and I don't need tactile feedback for the on screen keyboard I would say it is something some people will work easily with and others won't. Your results will vary.
As a side note if your eating that mess if food at your computer and not using napkins or towels your keyboard has to be disgusting
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Re:Touch screens and the like (Score:4, Funny)
Onsidering my iPhone is easy to clean and I don't need tactile feedback
You never input text?
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Re:Touch screens and the like (Score:4, Informative)
Sure I have, it's a lot easier than it is on a tiny physical keyboard.
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Re:Touch screens and the like (Score:4, Interesting)
The only people who continually raise the issue with this are people who haven't used the product, or have and are easily frustrated. Or they're too old to learn a slightly new trick. Even my dad can type quickly with an iPhone when he uses one, and says it's much better and easier than typing on the blackberry storm which also provides the physical feedback, but then again, the storm (first version at least) is an embarrassment of a phone.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, but all that tells me is that you suck at using a keyboard. World records for texting have people completing a 160 character message at 40 seconds.
See here [engadget.com] and here [wikipedia.org].
That works out to 48 words per minute, which is still very slow compare to even a novice touch-typist.
You will also note that the world records are continually won by people using tactile keyboards.
Re:Touch screens and the like (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not in love with my iPhone's keyboard (tactile feedback would be nice), nor am I particularly gifted at using it (I don't have a texting plan and send e-mails rarely), but I'd place myself around 25-30 wpm. With practice, I'd imagine I could easily pass 40wpm. I'm not going to suggest that most people can type as quickly with an iPhone as with a normal keyboard (I certainly don't), but the records you're waving around as a counter-argument to his claims are entirely irrelevant and deserve to be pointed out as such.
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Re:Touch screens and the like (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets imagine you're in the middle of a epic World of Warcraft raid. You're starting to get hungry, but it's still fun. Your option is to either quit the game and go make food in the kitchen. Second option is to quickly skype for a pizza delivery guy to bring you a large pizza with some mountain dew. Like in GP's case, I think what you're going to do is obvious. 15 minutes later and you hear the doorbell ring and after a short while your mom walking down the stairs with your delicious large hawaiian pan pizza. While grabbing the first slice, an alliance guy jumps out of nowhere and starts hammering you with fireballs. That scares you so much that the pizza flies from your hands straight to your 30" LCD monitor. While trying to catch the pizza slice in air, you knock over the mountain dew bottle over your new multi-touch mouse.
The point here being, new technology isn't always a good answer for everything.
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Re:Touch screens and the like (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the issue at hand here is the difference between inputting text "fairly well" such that you can write pithy tweets or whatnot and inputting text "really well" such that you can write novels, code, etc, etc without suffering serious hand fatigue after the first couple paragraphs or code blocks.
That wasn't and is not the issue at hand at all. Jurily supposed that the fact that the guy said he didn't have any problems with his iPhone's touchscreen meant that he must "never input text." He was just being a smartass.
I contend that trying to input text "really well" on something like a fucking cell phone with buttons on the fold out keyboard instead of a touchscreen is an exercise in asstardery.
That said, no one was discussing replacing the keyboard with some sort of touch pad, we were talking about inputting text on an iPhone. There are no cellphone equivalents upon which you would comfortably write slabs of code or a novel.
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What??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Dude, without any kind of tactile feedback, you have to look at the keyboard, instead of looking at the text you're typing. How can that not be a problem? Reasonable people can disagree over whether that means tactile feedback is "nice-to-have" or "critical", but let's not pretend the issue doesn't even exist.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe it's easier for some people than others. I got the iPhone 1st gen the day after it released and have never had problems typing on it. After the first week or so, I didn't need to look at the keyboard either.
Re:What??? (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe you've got some sort magic, GPS-enabled muscle memory, but most of us can't reliably re-position our hands over a particular position without some sort of reference -- that's why your home row has those handy little bumps. Given the number of times a day an average person moves from keyboard to mouse and back the initial positioning of the mousing hand is a significant concern.
And muscle memory fails entirely if you need to make *any* little change, like sitting slightly to the side of the keyboard, or even adjusting the height of your chair; keys provide the ability to re-align your typing in-flight, without needing to look at the keyboard, or to do some sort of error analysis of the output to determine the modality of the current misalignment.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't understand why you have to look at the keyboard instead of the text.
By Looking at the text, you see what you're entering; what does looking at the keyboard tell you that the screen does not? Unless you're comparing someone who can type without looking in the first place to someone who has too, in which case the argument seems strange to me.
Re:What??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you have to look at your mouse?
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The dirt issue seems much worse with normal scroll mice. Bacon remnants are fairly easy to wipe (or indeed, lick) off a smooth surface like a touch pad. Once any amount of dirt gets into the mechanical bits of a scroll wheel, you're left with the option of putting up with a sticky scroll wheel, or buying a new mouse.
The tactile feedback part is exactly how I feel, though.
Re:Touch screens and the like (Score:5, Insightful)
A Philips screwdriver and 15 minutes of your life will suffice to clean the inside of your mouse too.
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Re:Touch screens and the like (Score:5, Funny)
A Philips screwdriver and 15 minutes of your life will suffice to clean the inside of your mouse too.
Unless it's an Apple mouse, which is sealed for all eternity and cannot be user-serviced.
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Re:Touch screens and the like (Score:4, Funny)
Bacon remnants are fairly easy to wipe (or indeed, lick) off a smooth surface like a touch pad.
mentalimage.erase(slashdotposterwholicksbacon);
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Re:Touch screens and the like (Score:5, Interesting)
New capacitive sensors will work, even if it is covered in a layer of crap. You don't need to physically touch the surface to get it to work.
The real issue is this: How can you make it intuitive enough to work and become widely accepted? There are some people who still struggle with the right-click, let alone anything more complicated.
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Re:Touch screens and the like (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Touch screens and the like (Score:5, Informative)
Problem with this, like with many other touch screen like devices, is that you don't get physical feedback when you're clicking or scrolling or doing anything.
Thet doesn't seem to matter to iPhone or MegaGame machines. You need feedback, but not auditory or tactile feedback. The only need for tactile or auditory feedback is if your devise is so molasses-in-January slow that nothing apparently happens when you use the control.
Feedback needs to appear instantaneous or it's useless.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The Magic Mouse clicks. The entire surface is a button, just like with the older Mighty Mouse (a.k.a. Apple Mouse). It may be touch sensitive, but Apple agreed that feedback was necessary and built it in.
R&D vs. Actual Product (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think anyone is denying that Microsoft R&D can churn out some interesting concepts from time to time, but there's a big difference between shipping an actual product with most of the details worked out, and merely mocking up a few prototypes that are nowhere close to being ready for actual sale. I'd be curious to see what prototypes Apple came up with before shipping the Magic Mouse. That'd be a more interesting comparison.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And how much would these MS prototypes cost the end-user? One that may be really awesome isn't going to be very practical if it is $700...
And have they done ergonomics testing to see if these concepts hurt your wrist after a day of use?
And how easy/hard is the configuration software? The user learning experience?
Comparing a real shipping product to vaporware is just silly.
I have an image in my head of a mind-controlled input device that simply takes the cursor wherever I want it, moves pages on a whim, and
Re:R&D vs. Actual Product (Score:4, Informative)
I believe the first consumer optical mouse would beg to differ.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/99/04/20/0214216/MS-Introduces-Optical-Mouse [slashdot.org]
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Funny how the article you refer to questions if the optical mouse was anything new even in 1999. Not to mention, of course, that said optical mouse was actually developed and built by Logitech and merely marketed under the Microsoft brand anyway.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They're all gimmicks. (Score:5, Insightful)
Which multi-touch mouse do you want the most? Or are they all gimmicks?
Nice card-forcing there.
I like Microsoft's basic wheel mouse on Windows and Mac, and HP's 3-button optical mouse on X11.
joke ? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, seriously, they post crap like that on the Internet?
This is a comparison of a finished product that is shipping today, against a number of prototypes, none of which you can buy anywhere and most of which you will never be able to buy. Most importantly, none of which are finished and ready for use. We're all living in the tech world. We've all seen at least a hundred videos of prototypes that we were really looking forward to - and the final product either never arrived or wasn't half as good as the demo had led us believe.
Make a comparison when they're both shipping. Everything else is dumb, and creating false expectations.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You must be new here.
Multi-touch "I'm a mac vs. pc commercial" (Score:5, Funny)
"I'm a mac" (Justin Long touches himself)
"I'm a PC" (John Hodgeman touches himself)
Re:Multi-touch "I'm a mac vs. pc commercial" (Score:5, Funny)
"I'm a mac" (Justin Long touches himself)
"I'm a PC" (John Hodgeman touches himself)
I live in San Francisco and in the local version of the commercial they are touching each other.
Parent
So many choices (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple Mouse (Score:5, Funny)
Doll (Score:5, Funny)
An alternative to the Magic Mouse (Score:5, Interesting)
If you love the "touch" aspect of the Magic Mouse, an alternative is the Wacom Bamboo Touch tablet.
It's roughly the same price as a Magic Mouse, it supports gestures just fine, the area makes it more comfortable than a mouse and best of all, you can also use it as a tablet.
Re:An alternative to the Magic Mouse (Score:4, Informative)
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Lifting fingers... (Score:5, Insightful)
So with my current mouse I can rest my finger on the mouse button, and press down when I want to click.
With these new mice, when I want to click I have to lift my finger up from the surface of the mouse and then press down (if the video in the article is indicative of how it functions). I think constantly lifting my finger would become tiring.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Not with the Apple Product.
I'm using one now, and there is a "tactical" feel for the actual click...
Re:Lifting fingers... (Score:5, Funny)
I think constantly lifting my finger would become tiring.
Someone definitely needs to get more physical exercise, me thinks.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Lifting fingers... (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe you should actually try USING one before deciding how intuitive or nonintuitive it is. It's actually a really fantastic mouse.
Parent
Advantages? (Score:3, Interesting)
CC.
Both Microsoft and Apple have introduced, eh? (Score:3, Informative)
On the bright side, I have a magic mouse now and will say that it really is a whole new (awesome) experience.
"Tame improvement" (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
...and by "tame" we mean "already living peacefully in people's houses." And by "radical" we mean "awesome in theory."
How to prevent finger movement = mouse movement? (Score:4, Interesting)
The title of this comment should be "How do these mice prevent finger movement from causing mouse movement", but due to the limits /. places on comment titles....
OK, so let us say I have the Mac Mouse, and I swipe my fingers over the surface to do a horizontal scroll of a document.
* How do I prevent my finger motion from moving the mouse itself, and thus the pointer of the mouse?
* Does the mouse have such a high coefficient of static friction that the CoF between my fingers and the shell * the force my fingers apply is too small to break the mouse loose?
* What does that imply about normal mouse usage?
** Will I lose the ability to move the mouse by small amounts due to the stiction?
** Will I have to completely change my grip on the mouse to transition from mousing to swiping?
Re:How to prevent finger movement = mouse movement (Score:4, Informative)
The title of this comment should be "How do these mice prevent finger movement from causing mouse movement", but due to the limits /. places on comment titles....
OK, so let us say I have the Mac Mouse, and I swipe my fingers over the surface to do a horizontal scroll of a document.
* How do I prevent my finger motion from moving the mouse itself, and thus the pointer of the mouse?
* Does the mouse have such a high coefficient of static friction that the CoF between my fingers and the shell * the force my fingers apply is too small to break the mouse loose?
For scrolling, it works the same way as any mouse with a physical scroll wheel. You steady the mouse with your thumb on one side, and your pinkie, ring, and (possibly) middle fingers on the other, and stroke with your index finger. You don't end up knocking your mouse around when you poke at the scroll wheel, do you?
** Will I have to completely change my grip on the mouse to transition from mousing to swiping?
Well, the multi-finger back/forward gestures are a bit trickier, since your index and middle fingers moving together aren't as dextrous as your index finger alone. The "back" gesture is pretty simple--you lift your pinkie and ring fingers off, but leave your thumb to counter the force of the swipe--but the opposite "forward" gesture is darned near impossible for me. Luckily, you don't navigate forward as often as you go back, but still.
The video on the Apple site helps.
Having played with one for a brief period:
- Normal tracking and clicking is no different from any other mouse
- Both X and Y scrolling is very natural and intuitive.
- The optional "scroll with momentum" is annoying and distracting to me, but might be familiar to iPhone users.
- Right clicking requires lifting your left finger. Easy enough to get used to, but not natural.
- Back and Forward gestures are cool, but would take some serious effort to get used to.
- The mouse is very low and flat.
Parent
An issue with the story (Score:3, Insightful)
From TFA:
Ok, can't agree with this one. Since then we've added the scroll wheel, which was a huge improvement in mouse technology. If you don't believe me, try going back to a plain two-button mouse, and then work with a document bigger than your screen. You used to spend your life moving back and forth between the scroll bar and the text. We've also, for the most part, done away with crappy ball mice in favor of the light tracking ones, which eliminated the sticky mouse problem.
Multi-touch may turn out to be a big deal, but it's certainly a stretch to say that mice haven't improved substantially since '68.
I sold my magic mouse :O (Score:5, Interesting)
So here is the deal: I ordered a Magic mouse and after an hour of use I put it back in the packaging and sold it to a colleague.
Why ?
The idea is great, the functions are not. Not being able to pinch, rotate and zoom without a key is one (stupid) thing, considering that the mouse can track 4 fingers.
Accidental actions (scroll mostly) is annoying. A button or ball moves when you move it, this thing tracks every touch, that annoyed me to hell.
Having no 3rd button however is an absolute deal breaker. I would live with a 3-finger touch, or 2 finger tap, but the lack of buttons just made me pack it and sell it.
And do not get me wrong, I use the Mightly mouse and several Logi trackballs and only Mac aluminium keyboards (except on my Macbook)...
I think the hardware is awesome but the drivers absolutely SUCK!
Just my 2c.
ps: the optical touch tracking looks interesting on the videos... maybe I would try that next... .or just stay with my logis.