I’ve long been mystified by both Apple and Microsoft’s inability to put together a useable mouse. Consider my experiences with each company’s showcase mice. On the one hand, Microsoft’s Arc Mouse was a pleasant-to-use and attractive foldable travel mouse, which — like every wireless Microsoft mouse I’ve tried — mysteriously gave up the ghost and experienced catastrophic hardware failure within the first couple of months. On the other hand, Apple’s Magic Mouse is a reliable piece of kit, but it’s ergonomically terrible and nearly unusable for things like gaming.
If only these two mice could come together somehow. Unfortunately, what I want is the hardware reliability of Apple and the conventional feature set of Microsoft’s mice, not the other way around. Microsoft’s forthcoming Arc Touch Mouse is the latter sort of abomination, offering the Magic Mouse’s touch capability as re-imagined by one of the most inept hardware manufacturers on earth.
Even worse? Early rumors pegged Microsoft’s Arc Touch as not launching with the Magic Mouse’s robust multitouch gesture set, but being single-touch only. So what the heck’s the point? It doesn’t even look as good as the original Arc. Forget it. I’ll stick with my Magic Trackpad.
