7 ms·

Apple: Magic Accessories

51 points by davidbarker 11y ago

Spooky23 11y ago
Reading between the lines here, does this mean that a mouse interface will finally be available for iPad? It would be awesome to have a mouse for Citrix/VMWare terminal access.
- alsetmusic 11y ago
  I assume you're referring to the Lightning to USB connection. Pics on the website show Lightning ports on the accessories, so the other end would be USB. This wouldn't connect an iPad and a Magic Mouse.
TomSawyer 11y ago
It's kind of a bummer that the new keyboard ($100) doesn't have a backlight while still keeping the eject button.
- dnissley 11y ago
  And still no black keys option :(
buster 11y ago
Scroll down to the mouse gestures and the first thing you see is someone slowly demonstrating the unbelievable feature of a right click on a mouse. With the index finger. Awesome. Edit: There it is: https://www.apple.com/media/us/accessories/2015/e137bcd8-6875-11e5-9d70-feff819cdc9f/magic_mouse/click/split_files/large/large_1.split.mp4 https://www.apple.com/media/us/accessories/2015/e137bcd8-687... I could watch this masterpiece all day.
- simonh 11y ago
  I got a Magic Mouse with my last Mac, with the one-piece top shell that rocks left and right depending if you want to left or right click. The very first game I tried with it was Borderlands, but you need to hold down the right-click button to aim and while doing so left-click to shoot. No can do. I love Macs and really appreciate the attention to detail Apple put into all their products. Except mice. I'd take the cheapest mouse off Amazon over any of the ones from Apple any day of the week.
  - stephenr 11y ago
    The Magic mouse surface doesn't "rock left and right". The whole piece clicks, regardless of where you press. What differs is that it is a multi-touch surface and identifies where your finger is at the time you click (or even tap, if you have that enabled). There is a built-in option in OSX to enable "Secondary click" (aka Right Click, but it can also be swapped to be triggered by a left-side click for Left-Handed users) on a Magic Mouse. If a piece of third-party software somehow doesn't work with the standard OS pointer system, it sounds like you should be asking them why their software is so terrible.
    - mikeash 11y ago
      And the answer is going to be, "Because it's a port from Windows, and the Mac's small user base doesn't justify the effort needed to redo the control scheme." Regardless of whether you find that answer to be acceptable, that's what it will be, and the alternative is not to have it available on the Mac at all.
      - wlesieutre 11y ago
        Not even the Mac's small user base. Out of the number of Mac users, take the very small fraction that play first person shooters, and then take the very very small fraction of those that do it with Apple's mice. 99% of that market is going to have something from Razer, Logitech, Corsair, etc. The other five people can bind zoom to their keyboard.
    - joosters 11y ago
      That's unfair on third party software. Pressing both mouse buttons is common in many situations, and is just something that the magic mouse does not make easy to support (speaking as a long-time magic mouse user btw) The hardware is actually capable of this. The surface of the mouse is fully multi-touch, it can distinguish 3-4 independent touches, so it could easily support left + right clicks at once. However, that 'gesture' is not one offered by the software. BTW, a great program to visualize the touch capabilities of the mouse is downloadable here: http://www.makeitgo.ws/articles/fingermgmt/ http://www.makeitgo.ws/articles/fingermgmt/
- panglott 11y ago
  You didn't like side-swiping or multi-touch tapping on a mouse with no buttons?
- stephenr 11y ago
  I don't understand how people on a site called HackerNews still somehow aren't aware of what features apple products have, while still feeling obligated to post comments based on their own assumed/misinformed views about the features they believe aren't there. Every mouse Apple have shipped for the last decade has supported "Secondary Click", and honestly after using a multitouch mouse for about the last 4 years, I don't understand how anyone would use anything else.
  - coldpie 11y ago
    I've got one of those button-less trackpads on my work Mac laptop. I can't fucking stand it. The clicking just kinda gradually stops working about halfway up, like the bottom half is clickable and then it slowly fades to a non-clickable surface as you move up. So you have to keep track of where your finger is to know if you can click. Click-and-drag when you realise you've run out of trackpad space to keep dragging is a mind-bending experience. What's fucking wrong with buttons?
    - stephenr 11y ago
      The trackpads on Apple laptops prior to the new force touch models are physically clickable only at the bottom because the top edge is basically fixed in place (as the hinge for the whole thing). I don't see how this is any worse than separate buttons - you'd still have the same physically clickable area then (the bottom bit) but you'd have less space to drag the cursor around. Seriously though, turn on tap-to-click. Never worry about physically clicking it again. > What's fucking wrong with buttons? A multi-touch surface such as the MagicMouse or Trackpad on a recent Apple laptop is so ridiculously more customisable than a mere one or two or even three physical buttons + regular trackpad. Taps, with 1-4 fingers. Swipes in 4 directions with 1-4 fingers. Swipe from the sides. Pinch/Spread with 2 fingers. Pinch/Spread with thumb and several fingers. Rotate. Seriously, this is just what's available out of the box with OS X, before you look at third-party software to track even more gestures on touch (trackpad/mouse) surfaces. Edit: clarified that pre-force-touch trackpads are top-hinged.
      - 11y ago
- mentos 11y ago
  As a 10 year old windows kid I was so turned off by having to use Macs in school because they lacked a right click feature. I wonder how many windows users this cost them.
  - Killswitch 11y ago
    All the Windows users who aren't capable of comprehending or understanding how the stuff they are using works.
    - IkmoIkmo 11y ago
      I remember visiting the brother of my friend quite a few years ago, he had a big iMac in his living room and asked me to put on some music. So I hopped over and was dumbfounded on how to right click. So I asked my friend and he basically said 'there is no right click' (note, both of them were mac users, I wasn't), and then I said surely there must be a right click!? Then he asked his brother and he was like 'don't really know, there's a key combination or something you can press I think'. Anyway I put on the music and thought for years macs had no right click and never bothered to investigate further. I never had Apple money as a teenager and never used Macs, and given both of them had for years I thought they must've known. I'd been in the back of my mind ever since, hesistant to even consider switching to OS X. Until my early 20s when I needed a mac for work, looked into it and right clicked on my mac ever since. I wouldn't dare put a number on the amount of users they missed out on, but I'd likely have switched a few years earlier. That, the price positioning and the minor hassle around office as a student were the three biggest things preventing it. The first ended up being totally false, the other two became less important as I stopped being a student and started a career.
      - Killswitch 11y ago
        As a Windows user for 10+ years before going to Mac, I had always heard people make fun of Mac for having no right click, and thought it was possible. But then I used a Mac and instinctively right clicked because that's what I was used to. Low and behold, right click worked. If you don't investigate yourself, that's your problem.
xd1936 11y ago
Now we have to deal with battery degradation. AAs can be replaced; Sealed-in Lithium Ion batteries degrade over time. A very Apple move, to change to hardware with more planned obsolescence.
- joosters 11y ago
  The figure I've seen quoted for many Li batteries is 1000 recharges at good capacity. For devices needing a recharge every few weeks, the batteries should last a decade or more.
  - togusa 11y ago
    They have a shelf life too. Lose 10-20% of capacity a year just sitting there.
- arbitrage 11y ago
  What's the expected lifetime of a mouse, and what's the expected useable lifetime of a li-ion battery? Yes, it will degrade over time, but you'll continue to get use out of it. I'd peg both at about 4-5 years at this point. It's not apple that's implementing planned obsolescence. It's the entire industry, and it's defacto obsolescence. Or would you still expect to be using your microsoft ball mouse from 1999 today?
  - panglott 11y ago
    I think I have a trackball upstairs in a box from circa 2000 that I suspect still works fine, with an ADB-USB converter. The design goals of these two devices are different. Of course, it's perfectly fine for different devices to have different design goals. In fact, they should!
  - togusa 11y ago
    Seriously a Logitech wireless mouse costs £8 here in the UK at the moment. It takes one AA battery a year for me and lasts about 3-4 years before the buttons stop working. So not the entire industry. As a side note I have a working Microsoft optical mouse from 1999 that was used for 7 years and is still fine.
FLGMwt 11y ago
Haven't we learned that the inward incline isn't the way to go? Or is it marginal enough in this case to be aesthetic?
bonaldi 11y ago
The way they talk about the new keyboard makes it sound like the MacBook keyboard, which I really can't get on with.
- Killswitch 11y ago
  The small keyboards without the numberpad have always been pretty on par with a MacBook keyboard. Which is why I love them so much. Before I went all Mac, I had trouble going from a regular keyboard to a laptop keyboard. Always missing where keys are and that. Once I went Mac with the keyboards almost exactly the same, I don't even notice it anymore.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
chiph 11y ago
> Apple Magic Mouse 2 has a new internal structure with fewer moving parts. It had like .. 1 moving part before - the switch when you depressed it.
- pdpi 11y ago
  And the battery compartment. And the power switch (which I expect it does still have).
  - chiph 11y ago
    I'll argue that the battery lid isn't a moving part since it doesn't move in regular use. But I'll agree that the power switch could be one. The new mouse is probably smarter about entering sleep mode and doesn't have a switch (guessing here). So that's 2 moving parts gone.
    - pdpi 11y ago
      I guess my Logitech G710 has me so used to piss poor battery performance that the battery compartment seems to me to be very much a moving part that gets moved on a regular basis.
- dcre 11y ago
  The batteries could sort of jiggle?
felixthehat 11y ago
I hope they're not phasing out the numeric keypad versions! I love typing on those. Never understood why Apple didn't make a wireless version with a keypad either.
- wlesieutre 11y ago
  It looks that way. No more Apple keyboards for me, I need those for Blender's view shortcuts.
  - felixthehat 11y ago
    Exactly my use case too! Blender is unusable without. In case you'd not seen there's a cool iOS app which replicates Blender's keypad functions - great when you're on a Macbook or similar: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/blender-keypad/id430784289?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/blender-keypad/id430784289?m...
    - wlesieutre 11y ago
      You can get a lot of it from the Pie Menus addon. Holding q pops up a menu, you push the cursor slightly toward the one you want and release the key: http://i.imgur.com/zDdbrER.png http://i.imgur.com/zDdbrER.png It's what I use on my laptop, but I still prefer the keypad when I can have a full keyboard.
- k8tte 11y ago
  ... And I never understood why they didnt make a wired version without the numeric mess :)
hatsunearu 11y ago
I personally find the force touch trackpad really spooky. It clicks in when I exert force, which is fine, and if I reduce the force without moving my finger, it clicks out, which is also fine. When I click and drag across the trackpad, the click out force point changes; it clicks when my finger leaves my trackpad, not when my finger removes the force on the trackpad. That hysteresis makes my brain hurt.
- shade23 11y ago
  I didn't realize this till you put it up.But does this have any effect on your workflow?
  - hatsunearu 11y ago
    Well I use a trackball and an external keyboard so it doesn't really matter. My personal laptops don't have force touch trackpads so it's a non-issue for me.
iMark 11y ago
The new trackpad certainly stands out in terms of pricing. £109 vs £65 for the new mouse.
- togusa 11y ago
  Ouch! As a comparison point paid £7.99 for my Logitech wireless mouse from Curry's. There's not that much extra value in it.
  - hollerith 11y ago
    I paid about $15 for a Microsoft Mouse 3500, which tracks my shiny desk surface (1960s linoleum) whereas according to internet reviews, the Apple Magic Mouse (older version) will not track a shiny or transparent surface.
    - togusa 11y ago
      Yep. I actually had the last magic mouse and it nips your fingers on the sides as well.
dangerlibrary 11y ago
In the section for the magic trackpad, there is a little animated gif showing how a two-finger swipe animates sliding webpages (presumably emulating "back" and "forward" buttons). The animation in the browser is choppy and there is a visible delay/mismatch between the swipe and the response. Apple's marketing can't even doctor a gif properly.
- stephenr 11y ago
  What are you talking about? It's smooth in the animation, just as it is in reality doing the same thing on a previous-gen magic mouse or MBP trackpad). Are you confusing the snap at the end with "choppiness"?
mathgeek 11y ago
I'm not a huge fan of the form factors on Apple's external input devices to begin with, and now that I can't just swap out the batteries and have an instant full charge while on the go... no thanks.
dot 11y ago
yay, finally rechargeable! i'm actually excited about the new trackpad. i have some kind of a weird sensation whenever i use a silver trackpad, a sort of tingle in my fingers. this doesn't happen on the magic mouse's white surface... anybody know what i'm talking about? my friends think i'm crazy.
- damon_c 11y ago
  Is your desk made out of metal?
- k8tte 11y ago
  i recognize this. i've been using only the apple trackpad for about 3 years now, and the "sensation" you describe was persistent for the first several weeks / months. the interaction by using the tip of your fingers is a bit wierd at first, but now i could never go back. trackpad is very superior to a mouse, at least for non-gaming stuff, like coding & browsing the webs
joosters 11y ago
No force touch on the magic mouse? That's surprising, it seems like an ideal candidate for the feature.
Splines 11y ago
Bringing the laptop interface to the desktop? Not interested. The desktop is the one place where I don't need wireless, I don't care how big, old, or ugly looking my hardware is, and what I bought 10 years ago still works perfectly fine today. The Magic Keyboard seems designed for using it from the couch. Any other use case seems better served with a "normal" keyboard.
- coldpie 11y ago
  Amen. I actually built up a stash of the old-style Microsoft ergonomic keyboards shortly before they stopped building them. I cycle through them only when I spill water on them; that is their Achilles heel. I give them Viking funerals.
  - togusa 11y ago
    Same with cheap cherry G83s for me. I widlarize mine though :)
- bshimmin 11y ago
  I've used an Apple Wireless keyboard (I believe the previous generation of the new "Magic" one) for a few years as my primary keyboard, usually at a MBP connected to one or more monitors, sat on a big glass desk. It's small, pleasant to type on, easy to move about, and slips into my laptop bag easily in case I really think I'm going to need it on the road (I rarely do). I replace the batteries maybe as much as twice a year. It's looking a bit grubby now so I'll probably buy this new one to replace it. I had much worse experiences with Apple's wireless keyboards when they first came out (pairing problems, latency, etc); but this seems to me like a technology that's pretty mature and "just works" now.
- IkmoIkmo 11y ago
  Friend of mine definitely did some couch typing on a TV-connected macbook in his tiny studio. Anyway, I agree that wireless isn't essential but I'd personally prefer it because I tend to use a mouse with my MBP half of the time. Putting a wired mouse in my bag vs just a mouse, then taking it out and connecting it with a cable in a coffeeshop.. it's just not as convenient as just throwing a wireless mouse in your bag and taking it out. Beyond that it's a bit cleaner on the desktop. I don't mind the look of a wire (actually I've never really used a wireless mouse because I don't care about the look, and the convenience isn't worth the money for me), but for example right now I have a notepad laying ontop of my wire, behind my MBP, behind my mouse, that's weighing down on the cable making it heavier to move the mouse. So I have to put the notepad below the cable, and then grab it from under the cable when I need it and this repeated throughout the day for anything I want to put on my desktop that has a mouse + charger cable crossing it. Ridiculous first world problems that I wouldn't spend money on solving, but if my mouse blew up today and a genie asked me if I wanted a wire on my free replacement mouse or not, it's clear what I'd choose. Another is when I disconnect the mouse on my MBP (hooked up to a keyboard, mouse and screen at home) because I want to plug in my camera or my phone to transfer some files and I only have 2 USB slots. Anyway again I'm not one to have a wireless mouse but there's definitely people who benefit in a desktop environment and I'd wager to say it's not a small niche, either.
usaphp 11y ago
Magic Trackpad 2 is a must buy for me, ever since I bought a new MBP with new touchpad that allows to click anywhere on a surface - I can't get used to old way of clicking only at the bottom of a trackpad, I want to click anywhere now and with consistent pressure
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ape4 11y ago
Is a cable for your keyboard really that bad. Its mean a perfect connection and no recharging.
- Corrado 11y ago
  Well, the newer Macs have limited USB ports so you have to either do a lot of switching around, or have a USB hub on your desk. Now you have 3 or 4 cords laying around which look ugly and, worse, usually end up getting hung up on my mouse and causing me to rearrange stuff. It's not the end of the world, but I really, really enjoy my wireless keyboard/trackpad and am looking forward to getting the new ones (at least the trackpad 2).
mrweasel 11y ago
>This solid but lighter build, along with an optimized foot design, results in a smooth, superior glide with less resistance. That's exactly my issue with the mouse. It glides to easily. The touch is pretty much useless because I end up moving the mouse instead. I'm probably holding it wrong. While I love the current trackpad, I'm not sure that I really believe that much in force touch, it seems like a very undiscoverable interface design. Some people are still struggling with single vs. double click, I don't feel that it helps them that they now also have to think about how hard they press.
rebootthesystem 11y ago
You know what is far more eco-friendly than not having to replace batteries on keyboards, mice and touchpads? Cables. Lithium-ion batteries are not necessarily clean to manufacture. And, eventually these things are going to end-up in a landfill somewhere. I truly don't understand this push to de-cable keyboards, mice and touchpads that will be attached to something on your desk. Every single one of our workstations, Mac or PC, has cabled keyboards and trackballs. I can't remember one single instance --in decades and hundreds of workstations-- of anyone, including myself, expressing any degree of inconvenience or any problem whatsoever related to cabled input devices. The way I see it, adding batteries --of any kind-- to a device that could very reasonably be plugged in and forgotten about is the exact opposite of eco friendly. The funny part you still have to have cables laying around because there will be a monthly two hour charging ritual --times N devices. At least with disposable batteries one could pop in new batteries and get going. Now, if you forget to charge, you'll have to attach the cable for a couple of hours. My guess is eventually people are going to leave the keyboard and touchpad plugged-in, again negating the reasoning for both non-eco-friendly lithium-ion batteries and wireless. This is a design choice made purely for design and presented with a very twisted justification of eco-friendliness when, in reality, the opposite is true. Outside of a few corner cases cabled devices would do just as well and be far more eco-friendly by a long shot. There are many articles out there on the issues surrounding the production of lithium-ion chemistry cells. Of course, as with anything on the web, it is important to understand the interests and bias behind who publishes the article and why. With that, I grabbed a couple to post the links here. I leave it to the reader to explore further. http://phys.org/news/2014-10-li-ion-batteries-toxic-halogens-environmentally.html http://phys.org/news/2014-10-li-ion-batteries-toxic-halogens... http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/01/19/tesla-motors-dirty-little-secret-is-a-major-proble.aspx http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/01/19/tesla-motor...
pilif 11y ago
For years now I have a TrackMan Wheel by Logitech, but it's starting to slowly dissolve after years of continuous use. Unfortunately, they don't make that one any more - only its successor which is wireless for some inexplicable reason (you don't move a trackball around - why do you care about wires?). As such I'm on the lookout for a replacement. I've tried the old Apple Trackpad, but it doesn't feel as comfortable as the trackball - likely because it has a way too steep angle for me - also it is in need of constant battery replacement which just doesn't make sense for a stationary object on the table. Maybe the new trackpad is a solution for this: The angle looks less steep and it can presumably be used in wired mode or at least it doesn't need new batteries as it comes with a rechargeable one. I'm used to Force Touch from a 15" retina macbook pro and I like it very much on that machine, so that's probably ok. Really looking forward to trying this one out :-)
- pilsetnieks 11y ago
  Or you could upgrade to a full-on trackball. I've been using Logitech Trackman Marbles for the past 8 years or so but a few months ago I upgraded to a Kensington Slimblade which is amazing.
_superposition_ 11y ago
Its a sad day when a wireless mouse and keyboard make it to number 3 on HN.
nicpottier 11y ago
Rechargeable is kind of nice, but a lightning cable? I thought we were all going to start standardizing on USB type-C?
- k8tte 11y ago
  apple released a usb to lightning converter, which was enough to make European Union happy iirc. www.apple.com/shop/product/MD820AM/A/lightning-to-micro-usb-adapter
- chrisBob 11y ago
  The lightning port to charge all of your devices is interesting. I kind of like the idea that the phone charger you have laying around anyway[0] can be used to charge all of your battery powered devices. The new Siri Remote for Apple TV has the same thing, and it surprised me at first, but it actually makes sense to do that rather than a USB connection for most of their customers. I agree they don't have it quite figured out though. The Apple TV developer kits came with two cables: You get a lightning cable to charge the remote and a USB type-C cable to connect to the Apple TV itself. [0] I think its safe to assume that the average person buying an Apple keyboard also has an iPhone in their pocket.
Sidnicious 11y ago
The built-in batteries feel like a step back. If you use the current crop of mice and keyboards with rechargeable AAs, you get the same benefits but can swap to a full set in seconds and recharge the old ones at your leisure.
joeblau 11y ago
Ascetically, these look very good. As a developer who spends a lot of time typing, I prefer using a keyboard with mechanical switches so I use a Das Keyboard. That being said, for my Mac Mini build server that is connected to my TV, these would make an excellent addition.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
IkmoIkmo 11y ago
My thoughts: - Nothing unexpected really. When they did force touch on the Macbooks, we all knew it'd be coming to the phone and wireless trackpad, too. - The lack of force touch on the magic mouse means developers are less inclined to create any essential force touch functionality into their software as a substantial number of their users this generation of hardware may just have the non-force touch mouse only. Not a really big deal (tons of old Macs without force touch around anyway), but if they'd been able to put force touch into every magic mouse too then you'd be able to create software that relies on force touch in a few years. - Trackpad feels a tiiiiny bit too large now. Not a big deal, a little redundant area is somehow comfortable and its for a desktop environment anyway. But just look at the pinch gestures, the hand in the video is shown pinching to full stretch and there's still area left to stretch even further. - Can still see a lot of people complain about the mouse's ergonomics. At what price, is it really? We've got plenty of great mice to choose from. The notion there are fewer moving parts is an interesting design choice, but it's not exactly important in the way it is for say an internal combustion vs electric engine where you see differences in wear and tear and such. In my experience the lifetime of all my mice has been ridiculously. It's certainly a nice looking design, but a higher elevation fits better in my hand and there are plenty of mice that offer that, offer wireless, offer swiping gestures and rechargeable batteries. Anyway, the tl;dr overal takeaway is that these upgrades make a lot of sense and I'd be more than happy to upgrade as an existing MM/TP user, but I'm not enticed to switch if I wasn't a MM1 / TP1 user to begin with. Question to you all btw, have you seen anyone putting force touch into their software on a mac? I've literally used it 0 times in the past 6 months mostly because I don't use safari, but I don't see any developers jump in to provide any functionality, either yet.
icedchai 11y ago
I wish Apple would make a mechanical keyboard. Those flat keyboards are fine for laptops. For a desktop, I want something substantial.
- steeef 11y ago
  They do! http://deskthority.net/wiki/Apple_Extended_Keyboard_II http://deskthority.net/wiki/Apple_Extended_Keyboard_II It'd be neat to see an update, but it's not going to happen. Mechanical keyboards are a niche product.
  - icedchai 11y ago
    Thanks for the link. I remember that from the 90's. I personally can't stand Apple's keyboards, laptop or desktop. I'm probably in the minority, but preferred the non-chicklet keyboards on the old (before 2008-ish) MacBook Pros ...

51 points by davidbarker 11y ago

Reading between the lines here, does this mean that a mouse interface will finally be available for iPad? It would be awesome to have a mouse for Citrix/VMWare terminal access.

alsetmusic 11y ago
I assume you're referring to the Lightning to USB connection. Pics on the website show Lightning ports on the accessories, so the other end would be USB. This wouldn't connect an iPad and a Magic Mouse.

TomSawyer 11y ago

It's kind of a bummer that the new keyboard ($100) doesn't have a backlight while still keeping the eject button.

dnissley 11y ago
And still no black keys option :(

buster 11y ago

Scroll down to the mouse gestures and the first thing you see is someone slowly demonstrating the unbelievable feature of a right click on a mouse. With the index finger. Awesome. Edit: There it is: https://www.apple.com/media/us/accessories/2015/e137bcd8-6875-11e5-9d70-feff819cdc9f/magic_mouse/click/split_files/large/large_1.split.mp4 https://www.apple.com/media/us/accessories/2015/e137bcd8-687... I could watch this masterpiece all day.

simonh 11y ago
I got a Magic Mouse with my last Mac, with the one-piece top shell that rocks left and right depending if you want to left or right click. The very first game I tried with it was Borderlands, but you need to hold down the right-click button to aim and while doing so left-click to shoot. No can do. I love Macs and really appreciate the attention to detail Apple put into all their products. Except mice. I'd take the cheapest mouse off Amazon over any of the ones from Apple any day of the week.
- stephenr 11y ago
  The Magic mouse surface doesn't "rock left and right". The whole piece clicks, regardless of where you press. What differs is that it is a multi-touch surface and identifies where your finger is at the time you click (or even tap, if you have that enabled). There is a built-in option in OSX to enable "Secondary click" (aka Right Click, but it can also be swapped to be triggered by a left-side click for Left-Handed users) on a Magic Mouse. If a piece of third-party software somehow doesn't work with the standard OS pointer system, it sounds like you should be asking them why their software is so terrible.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    And the answer is going to be, "Because it's a port from Windows, and the Mac's small user base doesn't justify the effort needed to redo the control scheme." Regardless of whether you find that answer to be acceptable, that's what it will be, and the alternative is not to have it available on the Mac at all.
    - wlesieutre 11y ago
      Not even the Mac's small user base. Out of the number of Mac users, take the very small fraction that play first person shooters, and then take the very very small fraction of those that do it with Apple's mice. 99% of that market is going to have something from Razer, Logitech, Corsair, etc. The other five people can bind zoom to their keyboard.
  - joosters 11y ago
    That's unfair on third party software. Pressing both mouse buttons is common in many situations, and is just something that the magic mouse does not make easy to support (speaking as a long-time magic mouse user btw) The hardware is actually capable of this. The surface of the mouse is fully multi-touch, it can distinguish 3-4 independent touches, so it could easily support left + right clicks at once. However, that 'gesture' is not one offered by the software. BTW, a great program to visualize the touch capabilities of the mouse is downloadable here: http://www.makeitgo.ws/articles/fingermgmt/ http://www.makeitgo.ws/articles/fingermgmt/
panglott 11y ago
You didn't like side-swiping or multi-touch tapping on a mouse with no buttons?
stephenr 11y ago
I don't understand how people on a site called HackerNews still somehow aren't aware of what features apple products have, while still feeling obligated to post comments based on their own assumed/misinformed views about the features they believe aren't there. Every mouse Apple have shipped for the last decade has supported "Secondary Click", and honestly after using a multitouch mouse for about the last 4 years, I don't understand how anyone would use anything else.
- coldpie 11y ago
  I've got one of those button-less trackpads on my work Mac laptop. I can't fucking stand it. The clicking just kinda gradually stops working about halfway up, like the bottom half is clickable and then it slowly fades to a non-clickable surface as you move up. So you have to keep track of where your finger is to know if you can click. Click-and-drag when you realise you've run out of trackpad space to keep dragging is a mind-bending experience. What's fucking wrong with buttons?
  - stephenr 11y ago
    The trackpads on Apple laptops prior to the new force touch models are physically clickable only at the bottom because the top edge is basically fixed in place (as the hinge for the whole thing). I don't see how this is any worse than separate buttons - you'd still have the same physically clickable area then (the bottom bit) but you'd have less space to drag the cursor around. Seriously though, turn on tap-to-click. Never worry about physically clicking it again. > What's fucking wrong with buttons? A multi-touch surface such as the MagicMouse or Trackpad on a recent Apple laptop is so ridiculously more customisable than a mere one or two or even three physical buttons + regular trackpad. Taps, with 1-4 fingers. Swipes in 4 directions with 1-4 fingers. Swipe from the sides. Pinch/Spread with 2 fingers. Pinch/Spread with thumb and several fingers. Rotate. Seriously, this is just what's available out of the box with OS X, before you look at third-party software to track even more gestures on touch (trackpad/mouse) surfaces. Edit: clarified that pre-force-touch trackpads are top-hinged.
    - 11y ago
mentos 11y ago
As a 10 year old windows kid I was so turned off by having to use Macs in school because they lacked a right click feature. I wonder how many windows users this cost them.
- Killswitch 11y ago
  All the Windows users who aren't capable of comprehending or understanding how the stuff they are using works.
  - IkmoIkmo 11y ago
    I remember visiting the brother of my friend quite a few years ago, he had a big iMac in his living room and asked me to put on some music. So I hopped over and was dumbfounded on how to right click. So I asked my friend and he basically said 'there is no right click' (note, both of them were mac users, I wasn't), and then I said surely there must be a right click!? Then he asked his brother and he was like 'don't really know, there's a key combination or something you can press I think'. Anyway I put on the music and thought for years macs had no right click and never bothered to investigate further. I never had Apple money as a teenager and never used Macs, and given both of them had for years I thought they must've known. I'd been in the back of my mind ever since, hesistant to even consider switching to OS X. Until my early 20s when I needed a mac for work, looked into it and right clicked on my mac ever since. I wouldn't dare put a number on the amount of users they missed out on, but I'd likely have switched a few years earlier. That, the price positioning and the minor hassle around office as a student were the three biggest things preventing it. The first ended up being totally false, the other two became less important as I stopped being a student and started a career.
    - Killswitch 11y ago
      As a Windows user for 10+ years before going to Mac, I had always heard people make fun of Mac for having no right click, and thought it was possible. But then I used a Mac and instinctively right clicked because that's what I was used to. Low and behold, right click worked. If you don't investigate yourself, that's your problem.

xd1936 11y ago

Now we have to deal with battery degradation. AAs can be replaced; Sealed-in Lithium Ion batteries degrade over time. A very Apple move, to change to hardware with more planned obsolescence.

joosters 11y ago
The figure I've seen quoted for many Li batteries is 1000 recharges at good capacity. For devices needing a recharge every few weeks, the batteries should last a decade or more.
- togusa 11y ago
  They have a shelf life too. Lose 10-20% of capacity a year just sitting there.
arbitrage 11y ago
What's the expected lifetime of a mouse, and what's the expected useable lifetime of a li-ion battery? Yes, it will degrade over time, but you'll continue to get use out of it. I'd peg both at about 4-5 years at this point. It's not apple that's implementing planned obsolescence. It's the entire industry, and it's defacto obsolescence. Or would you still expect to be using your microsoft ball mouse from 1999 today?
- panglott 11y ago
  I think I have a trackball upstairs in a box from circa 2000 that I suspect still works fine, with an ADB-USB converter. The design goals of these two devices are different. Of course, it's perfectly fine for different devices to have different design goals. In fact, they should!
- togusa 11y ago
  Seriously a Logitech wireless mouse costs £8 here in the UK at the moment. It takes one AA battery a year for me and lasts about 3-4 years before the buttons stop working. So not the entire industry. As a side note I have a working Microsoft optical mouse from 1999 that was used for 7 years and is still fine.

FLGMwt 11y ago

Haven't we learned that the inward incline isn't the way to go? Or is it marginal enough in this case to be aesthetic?

bonaldi 11y ago

The way they talk about the new keyboard makes it sound like the MacBook keyboard, which I really can't get on with.

Killswitch 11y ago
The small keyboards without the numberpad have always been pretty on par with a MacBook keyboard. Which is why I love them so much. Before I went all Mac, I had trouble going from a regular keyboard to a laptop keyboard. Always missing where keys are and that. Once I went Mac with the keyboards almost exactly the same, I don't even notice it anymore.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

chiph 11y ago

> Apple Magic Mouse 2 has a new internal structure with fewer moving parts. It had like .. 1 moving part before - the switch when you depressed it.

pdpi 11y ago
And the battery compartment. And the power switch (which I expect it does still have).
- chiph 11y ago
  I'll argue that the battery lid isn't a moving part since it doesn't move in regular use. But I'll agree that the power switch could be one. The new mouse is probably smarter about entering sleep mode and doesn't have a switch (guessing here). So that's 2 moving parts gone.
  - pdpi 11y ago
    I guess my Logitech G710 has me so used to piss poor battery performance that the battery compartment seems to me to be very much a moving part that gets moved on a regular basis.
dcre 11y ago
The batteries could sort of jiggle?

felixthehat 11y ago

I hope they're not phasing out the numeric keypad versions! I love typing on those. Never understood why Apple didn't make a wireless version with a keypad either.

wlesieutre 11y ago
It looks that way. No more Apple keyboards for me, I need those for Blender's view shortcuts.
- felixthehat 11y ago
  Exactly my use case too! Blender is unusable without. In case you'd not seen there's a cool iOS app which replicates Blender's keypad functions - great when you're on a Macbook or similar: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/blender-keypad/id430784289?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/blender-keypad/id430784289?m...
  - wlesieutre 11y ago
    You can get a lot of it from the Pie Menus addon. Holding q pops up a menu, you push the cursor slightly toward the one you want and release the key: http://i.imgur.com/zDdbrER.png http://i.imgur.com/zDdbrER.png It's what I use on my laptop, but I still prefer the keypad when I can have a full keyboard.
k8tte 11y ago
... And I never understood why they didnt make a wired version without the numeric mess :)

hatsunearu 11y ago

I personally find the force touch trackpad really spooky. It clicks in when I exert force, which is fine, and if I reduce the force without moving my finger, it clicks out, which is also fine. When I click and drag across the trackpad, the click out force point changes; it clicks when my finger leaves my trackpad, not when my finger removes the force on the trackpad. That hysteresis makes my brain hurt.

shade23 11y ago
I didn't realize this till you put it up.But does this have any effect on your workflow?
- hatsunearu 11y ago
  Well I use a trackball and an external keyboard so it doesn't really matter. My personal laptops don't have force touch trackpads so it's a non-issue for me.

iMark 11y ago

The new trackpad certainly stands out in terms of pricing. £109 vs £65 for the new mouse.

togusa 11y ago
Ouch! As a comparison point paid £7.99 for my Logitech wireless mouse from Curry's. There's not that much extra value in it.
- hollerith 11y ago
  I paid about $15 for a Microsoft Mouse 3500, which tracks my shiny desk surface (1960s linoleum) whereas according to internet reviews, the Apple Magic Mouse (older version) will not track a shiny or transparent surface.
  - togusa 11y ago
    Yep. I actually had the last magic mouse and it nips your fingers on the sides as well.

dangerlibrary 11y ago

In the section for the magic trackpad, there is a little animated gif showing how a two-finger swipe animates sliding webpages (presumably emulating "back" and "forward" buttons). The animation in the browser is choppy and there is a visible delay/mismatch between the swipe and the response. Apple's marketing can't even doctor a gif properly.

stephenr 11y ago
What are you talking about? It's smooth in the animation, just as it is in reality doing the same thing on a previous-gen magic mouse or MBP trackpad). Are you confusing the snap at the end with "choppiness"?

mathgeek 11y ago

I'm not a huge fan of the form factors on Apple's external input devices to begin with, and now that I can't just swap out the batteries and have an instant full charge while on the go... no thanks.

dot 11y ago

yay, finally rechargeable! i'm actually excited about the new trackpad. i have some kind of a weird sensation whenever i use a silver trackpad, a sort of tingle in my fingers. this doesn't happen on the magic mouse's white surface... anybody know what i'm talking about? my friends think i'm crazy.

damon_c 11y ago
Is your desk made out of metal?
k8tte 11y ago
i recognize this. i've been using only the apple trackpad for about 3 years now, and the "sensation" you describe was persistent for the first several weeks / months. the interaction by using the tip of your fingers is a bit wierd at first, but now i could never go back. trackpad is very superior to a mouse, at least for non-gaming stuff, like coding & browsing the webs

joosters 11y ago

No force touch on the magic mouse? That's surprising, it seems like an ideal candidate for the feature.

Splines 11y ago

Bringing the laptop interface to the desktop? Not interested. The desktop is the one place where I don't need wireless, I don't care how big, old, or ugly looking my hardware is, and what I bought 10 years ago still works perfectly fine today. The Magic Keyboard seems designed for using it from the couch. Any other use case seems better served with a "normal" keyboard.

coldpie 11y ago
Amen. I actually built up a stash of the old-style Microsoft ergonomic keyboards shortly before they stopped building them. I cycle through them only when I spill water on them; that is their Achilles heel. I give them Viking funerals.
- togusa 11y ago
  Same with cheap cherry G83s for me. I widlarize mine though :)
bshimmin 11y ago
I've used an Apple Wireless keyboard (I believe the previous generation of the new "Magic" one) for a few years as my primary keyboard, usually at a MBP connected to one or more monitors, sat on a big glass desk. It's small, pleasant to type on, easy to move about, and slips into my laptop bag easily in case I really think I'm going to need it on the road (I rarely do). I replace the batteries maybe as much as twice a year. It's looking a bit grubby now so I'll probably buy this new one to replace it. I had much worse experiences with Apple's wireless keyboards when they first came out (pairing problems, latency, etc); but this seems to me like a technology that's pretty mature and "just works" now.
IkmoIkmo 11y ago
Friend of mine definitely did some couch typing on a TV-connected macbook in his tiny studio. Anyway, I agree that wireless isn't essential but I'd personally prefer it because I tend to use a mouse with my MBP half of the time. Putting a wired mouse in my bag vs just a mouse, then taking it out and connecting it with a cable in a coffeeshop.. it's just not as convenient as just throwing a wireless mouse in your bag and taking it out. Beyond that it's a bit cleaner on the desktop. I don't mind the look of a wire (actually I've never really used a wireless mouse because I don't care about the look, and the convenience isn't worth the money for me), but for example right now I have a notepad laying ontop of my wire, behind my MBP, behind my mouse, that's weighing down on the cable making it heavier to move the mouse. So I have to put the notepad below the cable, and then grab it from under the cable when I need it and this repeated throughout the day for anything I want to put on my desktop that has a mouse + charger cable crossing it. Ridiculous first world problems that I wouldn't spend money on solving, but if my mouse blew up today and a genie asked me if I wanted a wire on my free replacement mouse or not, it's clear what I'd choose. Another is when I disconnect the mouse on my MBP (hooked up to a keyboard, mouse and screen at home) because I want to plug in my camera or my phone to transfer some files and I only have 2 USB slots. Anyway again I'm not one to have a wireless mouse but there's definitely people who benefit in a desktop environment and I'd wager to say it's not a small niche, either.

usaphp 11y ago

Magic Trackpad 2 is a must buy for me, ever since I bought a new MBP with new touchpad that allows to click anywhere on a surface - I can't get used to old way of clicking only at the bottom of a trackpad, I want to click anywhere now and with consistent pressure

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

ape4 11y ago

Is a cable for your keyboard really that bad. Its mean a perfect connection and no recharging.

Corrado 11y ago
Well, the newer Macs have limited USB ports so you have to either do a lot of switching around, or have a USB hub on your desk. Now you have 3 or 4 cords laying around which look ugly and, worse, usually end up getting hung up on my mouse and causing me to rearrange stuff. It's not the end of the world, but I really, really enjoy my wireless keyboard/trackpad and am looking forward to getting the new ones (at least the trackpad 2).

mrweasel 11y ago

>This solid but lighter build, along with an optimized foot design, results in a smooth, superior glide with less resistance. That's exactly my issue with the mouse. It glides to easily. The touch is pretty much useless because I end up moving the mouse instead. I'm probably holding it wrong. While I love the current trackpad, I'm not sure that I really believe that much in force touch, it seems like a very undiscoverable interface design. Some people are still struggling with single vs. double click, I don't feel that it helps them that they now also have to think about how hard they press.

rebootthesystem 11y ago

You know what is far more eco-friendly than not having to replace batteries on keyboards, mice and touchpads? Cables. Lithium-ion batteries are not necessarily clean to manufacture. And, eventually these things are going to end-up in a landfill somewhere. I truly don't understand this push to de-cable keyboards, mice and touchpads that will be attached to something on your desk. Every single one of our workstations, Mac or PC, has cabled keyboards and trackballs. I can't remember one single instance --in decades and hundreds of workstations-- of anyone, including myself, expressing any degree of inconvenience or any problem whatsoever related to cabled input devices. The way I see it, adding batteries --of any kind-- to a device that could very reasonably be plugged in and forgotten about is the exact opposite of eco friendly. The funny part you still have to have cables laying around because there will be a monthly two hour charging ritual --times N devices. At least with disposable batteries one could pop in new batteries and get going. Now, if you forget to charge, you'll have to attach the cable for a couple of hours. My guess is eventually people are going to leave the keyboard and touchpad plugged-in, again negating the reasoning for both non-eco-friendly lithium-ion batteries and wireless. This is a design choice made purely for design and presented with a very twisted justification of eco-friendliness when, in reality, the opposite is true. Outside of a few corner cases cabled devices would do just as well and be far more eco-friendly by a long shot. There are many articles out there on the issues surrounding the production of lithium-ion chemistry cells. Of course, as with anything on the web, it is important to understand the interests and bias behind who publishes the article and why. With that, I grabbed a couple to post the links here. I leave it to the reader to explore further. http://phys.org/news/2014-10-li-ion-batteries-toxic-halogens-environmentally.html http://phys.org/news/2014-10-li-ion-batteries-toxic-halogens... http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/01/19/tesla-motors-dirty-little-secret-is-a-major-proble.aspx http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/01/19/tesla-motor...

pilif 11y ago

For years now I have a TrackMan Wheel by Logitech, but it's starting to slowly dissolve after years of continuous use. Unfortunately, they don't make that one any more - only its successor which is wireless for some inexplicable reason (you don't move a trackball around - why do you care about wires?). As such I'm on the lookout for a replacement. I've tried the old Apple Trackpad, but it doesn't feel as comfortable as the trackball - likely because it has a way too steep angle for me - also it is in need of constant battery replacement which just doesn't make sense for a stationary object on the table. Maybe the new trackpad is a solution for this: The angle looks less steep and it can presumably be used in wired mode or at least it doesn't need new batteries as it comes with a rechargeable one. I'm used to Force Touch from a 15" retina macbook pro and I like it very much on that machine, so that's probably ok. Really looking forward to trying this one out :-)

pilsetnieks 11y ago
Or you could upgrade to a full-on trackball. I've been using Logitech Trackman Marbles for the past 8 years or so but a few months ago I upgraded to a Kensington Slimblade which is amazing.

_superposition_ 11y ago

Its a sad day when a wireless mouse and keyboard make it to number 3 on HN.

nicpottier 11y ago

Rechargeable is kind of nice, but a lightning cable? I thought we were all going to start standardizing on USB type-C?

k8tte 11y ago
apple released a usb to lightning converter, which was enough to make European Union happy iirc. www.apple.com/shop/product/MD820AM/A/lightning-to-micro-usb-adapter
chrisBob 11y ago
The lightning port to charge all of your devices is interesting. I kind of like the idea that the phone charger you have laying around anyway[0] can be used to charge all of your battery powered devices. The new Siri Remote for Apple TV has the same thing, and it surprised me at first, but it actually makes sense to do that rather than a USB connection for most of their customers. I agree they don't have it quite figured out though. The Apple TV developer kits came with two cables: You get a lightning cable to charge the remote and a USB type-C cable to connect to the Apple TV itself. [0] I think its safe to assume that the average person buying an Apple keyboard also has an iPhone in their pocket.

Sidnicious 11y ago

The built-in batteries feel like a step back. If you use the current crop of mice and keyboards with rechargeable AAs, you get the same benefits but can swap to a full set in seconds and recharge the old ones at your leisure.

joeblau 11y ago

Ascetically, these look very good. As a developer who spends a lot of time typing, I prefer using a keyboard with mechanical switches so I use a Das Keyboard. That being said, for my Mac Mini build server that is connected to my TV, these would make an excellent addition.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

IkmoIkmo 11y ago

My thoughts: - Nothing unexpected really. When they did force touch on the Macbooks, we all knew it'd be coming to the phone and wireless trackpad, too. - The lack of force touch on the magic mouse means developers are less inclined to create any essential force touch functionality into their software as a substantial number of their users this generation of hardware may just have the non-force touch mouse only. Not a really big deal (tons of old Macs without force touch around anyway), but if they'd been able to put force touch into every magic mouse too then you'd be able to create software that relies on force touch in a few years. - Trackpad feels a tiiiiny bit too large now. Not a big deal, a little redundant area is somehow comfortable and its for a desktop environment anyway. But just look at the pinch gestures, the hand in the video is shown pinching to full stretch and there's still area left to stretch even further. - Can still see a lot of people complain about the mouse's ergonomics. At what price, is it really? We've got plenty of great mice to choose from. The notion there are fewer moving parts is an interesting design choice, but it's not exactly important in the way it is for say an internal combustion vs electric engine where you see differences in wear and tear and such. In my experience the lifetime of all my mice has been ridiculously. It's certainly a nice looking design, but a higher elevation fits better in my hand and there are plenty of mice that offer that, offer wireless, offer swiping gestures and rechargeable batteries. Anyway, the tl;dr overal takeaway is that these upgrades make a lot of sense and I'd be more than happy to upgrade as an existing MM/TP user, but I'm not enticed to switch if I wasn't a MM1 / TP1 user to begin with. Question to you all btw, have you seen anyone putting force touch into their software on a mac? I've literally used it 0 times in the past 6 months mostly because I don't use safari, but I don't see any developers jump in to provide any functionality, either yet.

icedchai 11y ago

I wish Apple would make a mechanical keyboard. Those flat keyboards are fine for laptops. For a desktop, I want something substantial.

steeef 11y ago
They do! http://deskthority.net/wiki/Apple_Extended_Keyboard_II http://deskthority.net/wiki/Apple_Extended_Keyboard_II It'd be neat to see an update, but it's not going to happen. Mechanical keyboards are a niche product.
- icedchai 11y ago
  Thanks for the link. I remember that from the 90's. I personally can't stand Apple's keyboards, laptop or desktop. I'm probably in the minority, but preferred the non-chicklet keyboards on the old (before 2008-ish) MacBook Pros ...