Apple A1152
 | |
| Model number | A1152 |
|---|---|
| Branding | Apple |
| Manufacturer | Mitsumi |
| Buttons | 4-ish (it's complicated) |
| Handedness | Right (in actuality) |
| Features | Scrolling ball |
| Interfaces | USB 1.1 (Boot) |
| Sensor | Optical |
| Weight | 76 g |
| Introduced | 2005 |
| Discontinued | 2017 |
| Precedes | Apple Magic Mouse |
| Supersedes | Apple Pro Mouse |
Apple A1152 (introduced as the Mighty Mouse and later renamed Apple Mouse) was a standard mouse for Apple Macintosh computers. It was the first Macintosh mouse to support right-click and the first commercially available Apple mouse with a scrolling control.[Note 1]
The mouse was first introduced as "Mighty Mouse" but renamed after Man & Machine sued Apple for trademark infringement.[1] Because it was the current standard mouse, Apple rebranded it as "Apple Mouse".
Contents
Features
The mouse features a miniature scroll ball for scrolling both vertically and horizontally. The ball actually has a pressure sensor, and needs to be lightly pressed to work. The pressure sensor is also used in conjunction with another switch to produce a middle-click (see below).
Horizontal scrolling is reported as on the Z-axis, and not as "AC Pan" like on Microsoft mice.
The sensor is located in the front half (like the ADB Mouse II), but is not aligned with the centre of gravity. The predecessor Apple Pro Mouse had the sensor in the centre.
The USB cable is only 76 cm long, but comes with a matching extension cord. The short cable might be suitable when connected into the USB hub of an Apple keyboard, or into an Apple laptop.
Actions
Left and right click
Like its predecessor the Apple Pro Mouse, the entire top surface is one whole button on a pivot, actuated by pressing somewhere on the front where a mouse button would have been.
Instead of an actual second button it uses a capacitive proximity sensor as a touch-sensor to find which side(s) a finger is on the surface when it is pressed. Pressing it on the left side of the ball actuates left click. If a finger is on the right side, and only on the right side, it produces a right click. If fingers are touching on both sides, and the surface is pressed, it also produces a left click. To make a right-click, a left finger has to be raised sufficiently: the sensor could detect a mouse that is hovering slightly but not touching the surface, thus misinterpreting clicks intended to be right-clicks as being left-clicks.
While the mouse's shape is ambidextrous, two-fingers-being-left also causes problems for left-handed users who swap left and right mouse buttons in software.
It is also not possible to produce both a left and a right click at once, which in non-Apple software are used to e.g. cancel drag, multi-select or middle-click.
Middle click
A middle-click is registered by pressing the scroll ball hard enough to actuate both the ball's own pressure-sensor and rock the surface forward.
The ball's pressure-sensor has priority over the capacitive sensor. Because this makes middle-clicks easier to do, it is common for users to remap right-click to it. This can be done by editing the com.apple.driver.AppleHIDMouse.plist file and setting the Button3 value to 2. This will still not allow multiple buttons to be registered at once, however.
Side buttons
Pressing either side of the mouse (or both at once) actuates side-click ("back"). By default in MacOS, they activate Exposé. They are difficult to feel and requires repositioning the hand to use.[2] The predecessor Apple Pro Mouse had the same features but they were not buttons.
End of life
A wireless "Apple Mighty Mouse" A1197 was introduced in 2006, and discontinued in 2009 (at the same time as the rebranding), being replaced by the wireless Apple Magic Mouse. The wired A1152 remained for sale separately until 2017 even after the "Magic" Mouse had replaced it as the standard Macintosh mouse.
Gallery
Top
Bottom
See also
- Apple A1197 — the wireless version
Footnotes
- ↑ One of the first known scroll wheels on a mouse had been invented at Apple and patented eleven years earlier but not made into a commercial product. See Three degree of freedom graphic object controller.
References
- ↑ The Mac Observer — Man & Machine Sues Apple For "Mighty Mouse" Trademark Infringement, by Bryan Chaffin. Dated 2008-05-20. Retrieved 2024-05-17
- ↑ AnandTech — Apple's Mighty Mouse: The Move to Multi-Button, by Anand Lal Shimpi, 2005-08-04. Retrieved 2024-05-17
