Greg Reinacker’s Weblog

Never one to let new toys sit on store shelves too long, I picked up a Magic Mouse as soon as they were available in the local Apple stores. I was one of those rare folks who actually liked the mouse-formerly-known-as Mighty Mouse, so thought I’d write about it from that perspective.

First, I love the scrolling action when you slide your finger on the mouse. _Love_ it. I also find that I really like the momentum scrolling option, which, like the iPhone, dampens the scrolling effect when you lift your finger rather than stopping abruptly. I thought I’d hate the momentum (makes sense on the iPhone, but on a computer?!?), but it didn’t take long to get used to it, and then like it, and then actually be bummed when it didn’t work well in an app. The only app I’ve found so far that it doesn’t seem to work well in is Tweetie; I think it is actually working, but it’s so highly damped that you can’t really tell. [I saw a tweet from Loren saying he's waiting for his mouse to come in so he can work on it.]

If you want to stop the scrolling abruptly, like other mice, just don’t pick up your finger when you’re done scrolling…and it will stop in its tracks. Perfect.

The only scroll-related gotcha I’ve found is when you’re in an app where you can scroll down one line at a time (the example for me is the ThinkOrSwim trading app, looking at level 2 quotes, trying to scroll down one line at a time)…with the mighty mouse, it was easier to scroll down just one line, or three lines, or whatever you wanted. With the magic mouse, it’s still possible, but takes some finesse, which I haven’t mastered yet.

The other thing I really like is the fact that you can use the whole surface of the mouse for scrolling. Sometimes I’ll be reading a long web page, and take my hand off the mouse. Now when I want to scroll down a bit, I don’t have to position my finger right on the scroll ball, but in fact can just stick a finger anywhere on the mouse and scroll around.

Right-clicking on the magic mouse works exactly like it did on the mighty mouse, which works well for me. The two-finger swipes to go back and forward in a browser do work…but I haven’t trained myself to do it yet. It’s a touch awkward now, IMHO, but who knows, maybe I’ll grow to like it.

I do miss the extra buttons on the mighty mouse, which I had assigned to dashboard and expose. My hope is that Apple maybe adds some options in the mouse preferences to re-map the two-finger swipe to other functions, so we can customize the behavior to our liking. Or perhaps there are other gestures the mouse can recognize that just aren’t implemented in the driver yet. I’m not holding my breath, though. :-)

All in all, I like it a lot. I’ll probably end up buying another one for my other computer now. And, in case you want one, here are make-me-rich Amazon links for the Magic Mouse and the wired mouse!

Way back in 2005, NewsGator acquired FeedDemon. I vividly remember sitting down with Nick Bradbury and talking about our shared vision for the future of FeedDemon and the NewsGator platform…and many a night drinking a lot of beer and talking about RSS and what we now call social computing. Through it all, Nick remained laser-focused on both the future of FeedDemon, and his customers and how they would be brought forward.

Along the way, we added NetNewsWire to the family, as well as SmartFeed (renamed NewsGator Go! for Windows Mobile). All of it was part of building out the original vision for a core online content platform, and best-of-breed applications on nearly any device to consume content. All in all, I think we delivered on this vision – we built the platform, added the best applications on the most popular platforms, and made it all work together.

Since then, as you may have gathered, our enterprise business has grown faster than we anticipated (this is a good thing!). As the company has started to focus more and more on enterprise customers, we made the difficult decision to shut down NewsGator Online, and focus our online platform in on our commercial clients. As part of this transition, most of our client applications (FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, and NetNewsWire for iPhone) were re-released to sync with Google Reader as an online store, rather than NewsGator Online.

As part of that transition, Nick has gone “back into the wild” as an independent developer. FeedDemon remains a NewsGator product, but Nick is 100% focused on it, and he has complete control over the product direction and feature set. I like to think of this not as the end of anything, but rather the beginning of the next phase of FeedDemon’s life. Just as the initial deal with NewsGator opened up new opportunities for it, so does this new direction…and FeedDemon customers will see lots of exciting things coming up.

On a personal note, I’d like to extend a big “thank you” to Nick, on behalf of myself and everyone at NewsGator. Nick has been instrumental in forming our consumer product direction, always makes sure we’re taking care of our customers in the best way we can, and has provided a huge amount of input on our other products. He’s been a very influential person at the company, and we look forward to this continuing in the future!