Monday, December 2, 2002

I wish I could talk about a cool hack I put together tonight. But I can't because of an NDA. It should be lifted soon... 11:06:49 PM

Single button followup.... No, the Apple pro mouse does not do the trick. It has two fatal flows. First, the "whole thing clicks" concept is really lost on new users and little kids. Both parties tend to push down and end up dragging the pointer around with the button down. Often this leads to rather unexpected behavior. Secondly, there is a major physical problem with the design of the mouse. The strain relief on the cable doesn't actually relieve strain. Specifically, if the damned mouse jumps off the desk and tries to hang itself by its tail enough times, the cable will pull out enough to cause the connection between the cable and the control board within the mouse to become disconnected. Unfortunately, the problem is compounded by the rather short (though nice given a lot of circumstances) cable on the mouse. I have three of the damned pro mouse that have had the cables pulled off the boards -- all out of warranty. I sacrificed one to Ben-- the god of all that is put together in some random mechanical fashion-- and he discovered that, in fact, it is nigh bloody impossible to disassenble a pro mouse without cutting a couple of chunks of plastic [right below the "wings"] and breaking some other superglued joints. Of course, this makes it basically impossible to put the thing back to gether "correctly". sigh For all that gets right, mice are not one of them.... 11:05:34 PM