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.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
23 responses to “Microsoft’s Arc Touch Mouse Rips Off The Magic Mouse To No Avail”
Quality of the mouse itself aside, it’s not a rip off. Microsoft Research came up with the idea back in 2008. The Magic Mouse is a ripoff of Microsoft’s research.
“Magic Mouse rips off every other mouse on the the planet to no avail.”
First of all, I’m confused what part of the Magic Mouse the Microsoft Arc Mouse has ripped off?
is it the fact that it is arch shaped? Well then why would every mouse manufacturer preemptively pilfer the intellectual property of Apple by stealing the “arch shape” and test the waters of of Apple’s team of lawyers who believe they’ve invented multi-touch, the word “pod”, or an apple in general.
Second, If the blog accepted html tags, this would be in a <sub> tag to emphasize my bashful side of this argument. Yes, as a Microsoft customer, I am highly embarrassed by their lack of hardware capability. Their Xbox 360 design is not really their crowning jewel, however their support of every known piece of hardware ever made certainly makes up for it. I mean Lamborghini isn’t the best tractor maker on the planet, but they sure make some damn good cars.
Long story short, Microsoft made a fairly innovative mouse here (in design with a flatten=off arch=on, and functionality with haptic feedback scroll touch “wheel”) and your only response is RAWR RAWR APPLE RIPOFF! Then I’m glad that I’ve never patronized Apple.
Enjoy your iPad2 and the new BJ app, Hope there is some nice hardware to go with that.
P.S. not surprised you’ve written for Gizmodo.</sub>
So, you didn’t even test the arc touch and yet you don’t like it? Makes a lot of sense. Did you even try the arc mouse? Maybe it’s not necessary to test anything anymore and you can just throw crap at anything. That’s the beauty of freedom: to have an opinion regardless of anything.
My experience is the polar opposite of that expressed in the article. I think Microsoft make better peripherals than anyone else. I have a 10 year old Intellimouse Explorer that is still going strong, a 2 year old Arc Mouse that has never given me a moment’s trouble and a new Arc Touch mouse that has so far been equally reliable. OTOH, I had a Magic Mouse for an hour before I was on the phone to IT for something that didn’t give me cramps in my hand (now using my old Arc Mouse).
I don’t think the Arc Touch is quite as good as the original Arc Mouse in terms of ergonomics but it is still comfortable and makes up for any shortcomings by being too cool for school.
As for any ripping off, I had a Logitech mouse with a touch-strip instead of a scroll wheel 5 years ago (it was awful). What Microsoft have come up with is an order of magnitude better than that and very different overall. Unlike the Magic Mouse, though, it retains proper left and right buttons and includes brilliant haptic feedback. The only way they are alike is that both extend the traditional functionality of a mouse but they do it in very different ways.
One final point – anyone who would rather use a trackpad than a mouse obviously doesn’t use their computer for anything demanding and would be able to make do with any old mouse. I think trackpads are the absolute worst way to interact with a computer.
Hah! You’re such a Mac fanboy.
I enjoy my Macbook Pro, and I also enjoy my PC desktop.
Learn to write an article that isn’t biased based on brand-names, and actually review the product at hand.
Also, Microsoft didn’t rip anything off from Apple. Oh, touch sensitivity… such a revolutionary idea that Apple must own? I mean come on.
john brownlee is not worth listening to. I have more in depth sense and understanding of much of the technological features and products and have written a much better comparative review than this biased article. I own a Macbook pro, ipad2 and now the new iPad, an iPhone and iMac. However, I still have a pc and love products from Logitech and microsoft. Btw, I am a graduate of Stanford and a fellow at John Hopkins.