Apple's foray into the forbidden territory of multiple button mousedom came somewhat as a shock to both the Apple faithful and the Apple haters. This little piece of hardware has gotten more attention than any other mouse I can remember, with its fresh design on an "old concept" and departure from Apple's stance regarding the simplicity argument of the one-button design.

However, the Mighty Mouse is not the second coming of the mouse as Apple would have you believe, read on for more details.

Let's start with the most noticeable feature of the Mighty Mouse, the scroll ball. At first glance the scroll ball looks rather small if you are used to a "scroll wheel" that adorns nearly every other mouse in the world. The best aspect of the scroll wheel is its smoothness. Giving just enough feedback, the scroll wheel is a joy to use, however I believe that the Mighty Mouse would have benefited from a slightly larger wheel. If the scroll wheel has a drawback, it's the relatively small amount of travel it gives you. Even after changing the settings in the preference to give you maximum scrolling, it still requires you to reposition multiple times for long scrolls. What about the horizontal scrolling you ask!?! Well, I personally don't use this feature much at all since I always maximize my windows to my current workflow. The little experience I have with it, it works as advertised though it's not as smooth during 360 degree operation as Apple advertises. The last feature of the scroll ball is that it also acts as a third button when depressed and unlike the left and right buttons has very clear definition of it's "zone" (more on that later).

The second stand out feature are the "force-sensing side buttons". When I first saw these, I thought that they would be independent "clickable" buttons like any other. I personally love that sort of setup for back and forward navigation within a web browser having first been introduced to that by a Microsoft IntelliMouse within Windows. After a few minutes of use though I was sorely disappointed for a few reasons. First of all these "buttons" are really one button that can only be assigned one function. They can be used together (squeeze both at the same time) or you can squeeze just one for the same effect. Second, by design these buttons squeeze, not click, which doesn't give you any real sort of feedback to tell you if you've "hit the mark" and more importantly, the amount of force it takes to activate them made me think I had a defective unit at first... And finally, the positioning of these buttons causes me to reposition my hand during regular use to get to them, making them a chore to use.

The one-piece shell/left/right buttons work well with the exception of the definition of where each button is. This can take some getting used to as the sensors seem to be on the outskirts of the mouse and depending on your mousing habits, may require you to spread your "clicking fingers" out a bit (or a lot in my case) for a definite "hit".

By default the Mighty Mouse cleverly disguises itself as Apple's one button offering with both left and right buttons set to the same button (left click). I could see this as something that may help the multi-button challenged *cough* but otherwise will see a quick change in the preference panel by most users. Another thing that should be noted is that Apple has tightly integrated the Mighty Mouse with OS X and "just works"; this alone can sway some buyers.

Overall the Mighty Mouse is a usable piece of hardware but gives the feeling of an over designed product. While trying to separate themselves from the competition as Apple usually does, in my opinion, they have produced an inferior mouse in terms of usability compared to other available offerings. Considering the price of this unit, coupled with its shortfalls, makes it something that I would not recommend to users that are currently happy with their one-button mouse or are already using a multi-button mouse that they are comfortable with.