Honestly, nobody cares about the keyboard and mouse anymore; this is because the laptop keypad and trackpad seem to fancy the world’s tastes. Just for a moment though, consider a classic powerhouse desktop like I did, the iMac. When you purchase this baby, you get your choice of a wired or wireless keyboard, and either a trackpad or mouse. I chose the latter both times, and well, I’m completely satisfied; although I will discuss the pros and cons of each.
The Magic Mouse is at first sight the best looking mouse you have ever encountered, literally. Aesthetically, it’s a real beaut’, with 2 colors glazing it, and it’s arched shape. The top half of the mouse (where you rest your hand) is made of white plastic with only an apple logo down the bottom. There are no button separations or a trackball. The bottom half is an aluminum (I believe), and has a lot more to it. There run two rubber pads down the side of it, very thick, so I believe the mouse works equally well on a mouse pad, a desk, wood floors, a book, or your stomach (seriously it just worked great on my stomach). Also, along the bottom there is the battery door compartment; a thin piece of metal released by a clip, which I don’t like, but who really cares… It’s a battery door cover. On that cover lies the on/off switch, and the sensor most importantly, which seems to be “open” in the fact that there isn’t a larger plastic covering at the same depth as the battery door cover. Instead, you can poke your finger into the sensor and feel a larger orb and a smaller one to the left. I feel like this could allow dirt to get trapped inside, but really Apple must know what they are doing, because they can’t be that stupid, can they?
The way the mouse works is really what matters, and for ergonomics, look, and performance combined, I’d give it a 8 out of 10. Seriously, I think it just looks nice. But here’s the actual review of it’s work, it’s good, but it can seriously mess you up if you aren’t used to it. I had to turn off the Two Finger Swipe feature because it had lost me important data so many times. When browsing the internet, the Two Finger Swipe allows you to swipe two fingers to navigate forward and backwards in your browser, instead of dragging the mouse to the corner and clicking back or forward. Let’s say your listing something on eBay, and you are almost done the listing information (which can be a half hour of work if you do it good), and you accidentally swipe the mouse backwards, well guess what; all of your information is now gone, and your going to have to redo it! I turned that feature off after the second time that happened to me, it’s just too sensitive at the wrong times, even though it is really cool and handy.
Next you can choose between a classic Apple mouse click, or make it like a regular PC mouse. This means you can have the Magic Mouse only click in one spot, or have a right and left click for more options. On top of that, you can switch it from a right handed person to a left, and reverse the right and left clicks. Probably the best part of the mouse is being able to Scroll with Inertia. This feature lets you take your middle or index finger and using the basic motion of flicking with your fingertip, scroll from the top to bottom of a page.
From the mouse menu there are options for tracking, scrolling, and double click, so you can control the speed of your one finger scrolling. I set my mouse to medium, because again, sometimes it’s too touchy and sends you flying down the page; it can get real annoying real quick. Since it’s 100% wireless and the size of a bar of soap, you wouldn’t have a problem throwing it across your neighborhood. What’s great about the zoom option, you have to hold control and then scroll to zoom on screen, this way you can’t accidentally do it; Apple seemed to understand that one great.
Seriously, the last great thing is that instead of wondering when the mouse is gonna die, you just move the Magic Mouse on up to the top right corner, scroll over Bluetooth devices, and then mouse, and you’ll be told the exact percentage of battery life left. It takes about a month of avid use to wear out the battery, so I’d say it lasts pretty long. To sum it up, the Magic Mouse is Apple’s best mouse, it’s just touchy, because there are so many touch options. I think it’s the way to go, especially over a trackpad, I know I’d hate that thing.
The Wireless Keyboard is by far the cutest little keyboard you’ve ever seen, that’s what girls will tell you. But really, it isn’t any smaller than a regular keyboard, you’re just missing the numeric pad, which makes it feel puny, but ultimately you’ve lost a dumb weight adder. Personally, I’ve never gotten the numerical pad, there are numbers up top, so why put more on the side? Anyway, they keyboard has everything you need, all the keys, all the numbers, function keys, scroll arrows, and the escape and eject buttons. From the function keys you can control brightness, open windows, Dashboard, iTunes and DVD player controls, and volume. Pretty much everything you need is right on the top of the keyboard, and there is no remembering needed, just little obvious symbols in the middle of each key. There’s not much else to the keyboard, except what you can control from System Preferences. You can personalize the keyboard to your needs and feel, but it comes almost perfectly setup out of the box.
The ergonomics and aesthetics of the keyboard are a bit different than a PC user would be used to. Apple really went for the plain and simple, and it really came out plain and simple. I like it, it looks great, it as the opposite of the mouse, have an aluminum upper with white plastic keys, and a white plastic lower half with white rubber pads. The battery compartment door is located on the left side in the circle, you twist it off and replace the batteries. On the right side is the power button, which you never need to press unless your replacing batteries because this thing uses no energy. I haven’t replaced the batteries on this keyboard once and I’ve had it for 2 months. Again, you can check it form the Bluetooth devices in the top right menu.
Finally, the ergonomics of the keyboard. I’m going to say that surprisingly, it is ergonomically fit if you know how to effectively change your typing style to fit the board. The old home row lockdown with your palms bent awkwardly isn’t going to work; every key is flat and raised above the last row by only a millimeter. To me, this means I have to be a little more leaned back, and looking at the keyboard and computer at the same time, still typing fast but checking that I’m getting everything right. I never seem to hit wrong keys, but my palms get sore after a while of them cutting into my desk, and so that’s when I start to mess up. I’m only a kid though, my dad loves the keyboard and mouse, but he’s half retarded when it comes to technology so what would he know? Overall, it’s my favorite keyboard, looks nice, and I love that the numeric pad is gone, and that I can pick it up and take it over to the other side of the room and still type.
In the end, the combination of the Apple Wireless Keyboard and Magic Mouse is what I would recommend, at least for the highest level of consumer product. I say it looks nice, it feels nice, and it works nice, so it probably is nice. But try to get a steal on this, Apple sells them for like one-hundred something for the package, I just sold the combination on eBay for $102. If you look hard you can definitely get a really good deal on this that you won’t regret.