Switched to Apple / Mac

Of Mice and Man

August 12th, 2008

I’ve been using one Microsoft Mouse or the other since I started using a mouse with a computer. Yes, there was a time when a computer did not have a mouse included! (Not true for Macintosh though) I paid roughly $100 for my first mouse and it was a Microsoft bus mouse that required the installation of an expansion card in your system so that you would have someplace to plug it in. This pre-dated Windows 3.0 so there really was not a lot of uses for a mouse in the DOS world. However, I am pretty sure I was the first kid on my block to have a mouse. When I switched to Mac I did use the Apple Mighty Mouse for awhile but when it did not work with World of Warcraft it found itself abandoned in a drawer and replaced with one of Microsoft ones I had laying around. So when it came to buy a new mouse recently, it was a fairly tough decision to abandon what I had used for so many years. Ultimately, it came down to the Microsoft Mouse software for OS X which I had become disgusted with over the last several months. Every time the battery in the mouse got low it displayed a dialog box on the screen every 30 seconds or so. Clicking on “remind me later” / go away had no impact. If I was working in another app and not paying attention, literally hundreds of these would be created on top of each requiring as many clicks to get rid of them. I could tell when this happened because it started having an impact on system performance. Immediately replacing the batteries was the only solution.

I arrived at Best Buy on a mission for a non-Microsoft mouse since I didn’t want to deal with the Microsoft software any longer. After a lot of simulated mouse activity and button clicking I decided on the Logitech MX Revolution. Of course it was the most expensive one which is something I am noted for picking in any situation. However, I use a mouse a LOT and decided the $100 would be money well spent. Uncharacteristically, I never bothered to do any research before going to look. After all, a mouse is a pretty personal thing when it comes to feel and comfortability. I liked the ergonomics and features of the MX Revolution and still do. However, installing, configuring, and testing after installing the Logitech Control Center left me less than impressed. Scrolling seems jerky, unpredictable, and appeared to have a built in delay at times. I noticed odd behavior in some software and started googling. The culprit was identified as the LCC software. A visit to Logitech’s forums confirmed this and I found myself surrounded by a lot of pissed of Mac users there. Apparently, the LCC software causes a ton of problems and generally just works poorly. I could just dump it and use the built in OS X mouse features but I just bought a mouse that has 7 buttons and 2 scroll wheels which wouldn’t be configurable by the standard OS X control panel.

Enter Steermouse to the rescue.

Steermouse is a 3rd party advanced mouse driver for OS X. It lets you customize all the buttons of the MX Revolution, assign functions or keyboard shortcuts to button or scroll wheels, create scroll actions, launch applications, and even has feature t bring up the application switcher. Even cooler is the ability to map all of these features differently per application! So I can have the tilt wheel switch between tabs in Safari while manipulating the horizontal scroll bars in iTunes for example. The ability to customize the mouse on a per application basis is a seriously cool feature. Of course, I am forgetting the most important thing about SteerMouse: It works great! Unlike the totally worthless LCC software, SteerMouse will have your mouse kicking up its tail in glee. You can try SteerMouse free for 30 days and a license to continuing using after that period is $20 which is well worth it in my opinion. If your current mouse software is leaving you frustrated or wanting, I highly recommend that you go download SteerMouse now.

A ton of people on the Logitech forums also had success using Steermouse to eliminate their issues but did not feel it was fair that they had to pay for a 3rd party driver to fix their issues. You can add me to that list as well. However, one can rant and rave to Logitech until they are blue in the face (Logitech doesn’t seem overly concerned) or they can accept the fact that the included software is junk and move on. Personally, I’ll chalk it up as a learning experience and be glad that I found the capable SteerMouse software to get me back in business. I cannot say with 100% certainty that I’ll never buy another Logitech mouse again, but is very unlikely. However, all is well that ends well and SteerMouse was the means to that end.

Entry Filed under: Computer Memories, Macintosh