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Filed under: Editing •Hardware •Post Production •

Review: Apple Magic Mouse and Final Cut Studio

The Magic Mouse is smaller overall than the Mighty Mouse it replaces

And with Color

In Color the single-finger swipe momentum of the Magic Mouse actually feels better when compared to the trackball of the Mighty. Hover the pointer over a Color parameter and then swipe up or down to adjust. A small, slower swipe will reveal a gradual change. A long, fast swipe and you will get a quicker, more dramatic change. You can slowly slide your finger along the surface without a swipe at all and you will get a more steady tweak. To me it’s a much better feeling way to work in Color as opposed to the Mighty Mouse and what seemed to often be constant scrolling of the little trackball to get the desired change. If you’ve used a Kensington Expert Mouse trackball with Color then you know it’s scroll ring can adjust parameters too but often you might knock the pointer out of the rather thin horizontal box while spinning the ring so the Magic Mouse is much better than that. Of course nothing is as good as a control surface (like say ... the Tangent Wave) but short of that then I think I’ll leave my Magic Mouse within reach when I move to Color.

The profile of the Magic Mouse is lower than that of its predecessor

I’ve tried to illustrate the different in the Mighty and the Magic mouse with the QuickTime files below. Watch the Waveform and the Histogram change as I scroll with the Mighty Mouse, moving the Master Lift from the default of 0.0 to all white at 1.0 and then back to black at -1.0. It takes quiet a few quick scrolls of the Mighty Mouse trackball. Then I just did some minor adjustments on the image but the best illustration is moving to the extremes:

The trackball of the Mighty Mouse requires many scrolls to move over an extreme distance

Compare that to using the Magic Mouse to do the same thing. It was one good swipe of my finger to move to 1.0 on the Master Lift and just a couple of swipes to move to -1.0. I feel like you can be just a bit more precise with the touch surface of the Magic Mouse in addition to being able to work a bit faster.

The touch surface of the Magic Mouse lets you tweak Color parameters smoothly and very quickly

What you don’t have in Color anymore is that middle mouse button that would scroll the timeline horizontally. You’ll have to settle for the right+click to scale the timeline then scrubbing of the playhead to move around. I can’t even figure out a way to horizontally move the timeline at all without that middle mouse button! But to me it’s a small price to pay for the single-finger swipe with momentum while working in Color. Oh, and the two-finger swipe will move between clips. Unfortunately the swipe action doesn’t have any effect on the Shadow, Midtone and Highlight wheels and sliders as they require a click and drag with the mouse. Too bad as that’s one place the touch surface could have really shined. If you look at Appendix C of the Color user manual it’s all about multi-touch gestures that were added to Color 1.5 so there’s something there but outside of a Macbook Pro’s trackpad I don’t know of anything that can utilize these gestures. Maybe this new Wacom Bamboo Touch?

Surprisingly in Motion the touch surface doesn’t want to operate very many controls at all. While you can use the touch to move the canvas around (with momentum) it doesn’t react to scrolling the timeline or mini-timeline nor does the touch move sliders in the Inspector. But the Mighty Mouse doesn’t either so it seems that it works in mostly the same places as the Mighty trackball only you can get momentum. A two-finger swipe does open the Layers/Media/Audio pane in the Canvas though.

In Soundtrack Pro a single finger swipe will scroll windows and move sliders in the mixer but it will not scrub the playhead. A two-finger swipe opens/closes the Meters/Brower pane in the default window setup. IMHO you’re not really gaining near as much with the Magic Mouse in Motion and Soundtrack Pro that you are in Color. In Final Cut Pro it’s debatable.

Final Thoughts

Is the Magic Mouse a suitable replacement for the Mighty Mouse? Probably not yet in my edit suite where Final Cut Pro is the dominate app of the suite in terms of time spent in the application. The functionality of the Magic’s touch isn’t that much greater than the trackball of the Mighty Mouse in FCP especially when losing the middle mouse button and side-button squeeze. If you haven’t mapped those two lost buttons to anything then you might enjoy the Magic Mouse as much or better than the Mighty Mouse. The momentum when you swipe also isn’t enough to trump middle mouse button (which is my desktop Exposé command that I use a lot) and the squeeze button (which activates my Spaces, which I use a lot too). In Color it’s a different story as I much prefer the functionality of the Magic Mouse. I’ll keep it around for those days when I have to jump over and do some color work.

Pros: Great build quality, swiping with momentum works well in Color, large touch-sensitive surface

Cons: No middle mouse button and no side-squeeze buttons, swiping doesn’t work the same in all of the Final Cut Studio applications, wireless only

I’d skip the Magic Mouse unless you use Color without a control surface as it might make you a bit more productive in that app. Since it’s a new way of operating a mouse it’s advisable to test drive a friend’s or check it out at an Apple store before spending $69.

FTC Disclosure: Per the new FTC guidelines regarding bloggers and disclosure, I purchased the Apple Magic Mouse with my own money at an Apple store as I was very curious how the touch surface would work with editing applications day to day. The main Magic Mouse product shot is courtesy of Apple. The other pictures are courtesy of my iPhone and several different photo editing iPhone apps.

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Great point twizz ... that’s a great example of different users working in different ways. I seem to usually always use the scroll ball on the Mighty Mouse or the trackball. While I did mention the lack of the middle mouse button on the Magic Mouse I didn’t mention that particular use of it so thanks for the comment as some Color users may work the same as you.

Posted by Scott Simmons  on  11/06  at  03:41 PM

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Nice thorough review, thanks!

Posted by Mark Spencer  on  11/07  at  01:00 AM

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There is a way to emulate the MiddleClick:
http://www.pqrs.org/tekezo/macosx/keyremap4macbook/list.html

Check my post from 2009/11/08 13:59 JST

The developer is pretty fast, so I hope he’ll fix it soon. I’d be more than happy with FN (or alt)+LeftClick to MiddleClick since I always have my left hand on the keyboard.

As mentioned in the review, it’s possible to work in Color without MiddleClick, but it’s essential in apps like Shake and Nuke.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  11/07  at  11:22 PM

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I think I’ll be changing to a Magic Mouse regardless. The lack of easy cleaning and the speed at which the Mighty Mouse clogs up means that the Magic should be worth its weight in gold.

Posted by Simon Wyndham  on  11/08  at  03:31 PM

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I definitely can recommend the MagicMouse, it’s a brilliant piece of industrial design! I don’t say this out of fanboyism, it is more than just another mouse. It really is a new way of operating which I personally prefer. But what I probably like the most is it being so flat.

Nevertheless, I’d also say check it out in a store if it suits you, instead of just ordering one.

By the way, the developer is not pretty fast, he has already done it. We now have a magical MiddleClick

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  11/08  at  08:50 PM

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