iMac mouse

In reply to Rick Murray:

I’m not sure I want to be educated on the merits of mice by a company that managed to supply the iMac with the most god awful mouse I’ve ever come across. One single button (as far as I can tell) and a design that is basically a miniature Roomba with a wire attached.

I don’t want to pollute the Bounties forum, but I agree entirely w.r.t. the circular puck mouse of the original iMac. Having a single button wasn’t the problem with that design, it was that every time you returned your hand to the mouse you had to work out which way was ‘up’. The only way they could have made it worse was to remove the wire so that there was absolutely no clue before the pointer wandered off at a random diagonal angle!

I don’t really like any kind of mouse – I prefer a decent trackerball (the Marconi one*) or a trackpad (Apple Magic Trackpad*) – but the original iMac one has to be the worst ever.

* I’ve tried others but these are the only ones I actually like.

The modern bluetooth wireless magic mice are terrible too. It’s a mouse which you have to use without touching it. If you try and right-click while any part of your hand is touching the left or middle side of the touch surface then it gets interpreted as a left click. So to provide grip for moving the mouse you end up having to use your thumb and little finger to pincer the (un-ergonomic) sides, while the palm of your hand and other three fingers hover carefully above the touch surface.

Never handled one of those. Sounds like I don’t want to! I’ve still got one of the old square trackpads, which is fine – I hope it lasts me! Are the new rectangular ones as good? There was a big jump in price when they changed – “magic” keyboards went up a lot at the same time.

Apple mice seem designed to grip rather than glide. The plastic tracks are awful and have been through each generation. Agree with Clive about the trackpad which is what I prefer to use.

I have several Marconi Trackerballs, bought as part of a job lot when a former employer abandoned Acorn systems for publishing. I’ve converted a couple of them to PS2, but have yet to convert one to USB for the Pi – it’s on my todo list! For the moment I’m stuck with a b****y mouse.

Of course if I could use the Apple Magic Trackpad that would be even better…although how the three buttons would work I’m not sure. The real ideal would be to be able to use the same wireless keyboard and trackpad for both the Mac Mini and the Pi, with a little switch somewhere.

I like my EeePC’s little touchpad. I seem to be in a minority of one when it comes to touchpads. :-/

I used a rollerball thing ages ago (hint: it had a 9 pin serial plug attached!) and while it wasn’t bad, it seemed to need to be rolled a lot.
I guess the paradigm is whether or not you want to move your entire arm to push the screen pointer around.

That being said, one of the worst pointing devices I’ve ever encountered (managing to out-suck the iPad puck) is that little green or red ‘stick’¹ thing on older laptops. Nudge it around to control the pointer, which would usually go anywhere except where you wanted it to go; and often these things were stuck into the keyboard (like sort of between g,h, and b) so it’d be easy to hit while typing, and if you’re used to whipping your fingers just over the keytops, knocking the stupid thing.

¹ Or “knob”, in both senses of the word.

Bluetooth generally is a hack waiting to happen (or as a colleague put it: an arse waiting to be kicked)

My “favourite” company, in terms of object of ridicule, feature regularly in the Register and elsewhere.
Medtronic¹ having had their pacemakers feature in articles in 2018 and 2019 managed to patch by 6th Feb 2020 just in time for the news article on 16th Feb delivering the news of a raft of new holes in Bluetooth “security”

¹ I sometimes think I should be kinder to them, then the madness clears microseconds later.

arse waiting to be kicked

Recognition that an ass has four legs whereas an arse only has two.

Medtronic1 having had their pacemakers feature

Hmm. I have a Medtronic loop monitor watching my heart’s odd behaviour – had it for 3.5 years now, its battery is on (or possibly in the last few weeks, off) its last legs. Should I worry that anyone could hack into it? Since it’s not a pacemaker, it can’t physically hurt me, and I’m not sure anyone can really make use of any information it might leak, can they?

Should I worry that anyone could hack into it?

If it’s not pace making your heart then no great health issue.
If it’s supposed to alert via the CareLink setup you probably have to allow it to phone home then that function can be impaired.

I’m guessing what you have may be a Holter monitor style device – records stuff for later download and the clinicians play it back and examine the unusual bits.

Just be aware that Medtronics awareness of security is lacking. Just do a web search for Medtronic and Register and you will find a few biting comments. Search for “Medtronic bluetooth security” and you should get articles from 2016 2017 2018 2019 and even 2020.

I’m not sure anyone can really make use of any information it might leak, can they?

Adjust your insurance in a non-preferential direction?
Flag your file in such a way that you can’t get insurance for flights and holidays without spending half your savings?

Bombard you with (more) advertising about care homes and funeral plans?

records stuff for later download and the clinicians play it back and examine the unusual bits

Exactly. I have a trigger device I can press to tell it I’m experiencing symptoms and it should keep the last half hour or so, or it can decide for itself to keep particular stretches. Then once every three months, or within a few hours if I’m aware that I’ve had symptoms, I upload to Addenbrookes by Carelink.

Adjust your insurance in a non-preferential direction?

Insurance? What’s that? 8~)

As for bombarding me with adverts – well, good luck to them. Shredded junk mail makes great hamster bedding for next door, and electronic spam? Water off a duck’s back, I seem to have the bandwidth not to suffer noticeably.

I have a trigger device I can press to tell it I’m experiencing symptoms and it should keep the last half hour or so, or it can decide for itself to keep particular stretches. Then once every three months, or within a few hours if I’m aware that I’ve had symptoms, I upload to Addenbrookes by Carelink

Yep, the CareLink stuff is in one of the Register articles. IoT tech with a naff security build.
It opens up the local network to abuse/hacks. The pacemaker and insulin pump users have more to worry about though.

Shredded junk mail makes great hamster bedding for next door,

No use as a litter tray liner so I keep one of the recycle boxes under the letterbox.

Tried a Tory election leaflet once and the cats used the floor alongside after being clearly distressed at a Tory face in the tray…

I like my EeePC’s little touchpad. I seem to be in a minority of one when it comes to touchpads. :-/

Having just replaced a laptop with a nice shiny new Dell one – I wouldn’t have believed how totally unusable the touchpad is.

The problem is that the buttons form part of the touchpad area, so every attempt to press a button moves the pointer first. A quick Google will show that I’m not alone in disliking this thing.

Annoyingly, it even detects finger presence through thich plastic and card, so attempting to shield the buttons from detecting a finger while still allowing the buttons to be pressed doesn’t work either.

It seems to have been designed by someone who has only ever used a phone screen, so doesn’t know what buttons are for.

I now keep a mouse permanently in the laptop case. At home, it runs through a docking station to a proper mouse, keyboard and monitor so it isn’t an issue.

The problem is that the buttons form part of the touchpad area

Ah, bad implementation.

Google a picture of the EeePC 901. Touchpad with largish silver buttons below. Only two, mind you, but it is aimed at the x86 world. ;-)

so every attempt to press a button moves the pointer first

Yeah, my wireless keyboard that I use with the PC (can’t use it with RISC OS, the machine locks solid!) has an integrated touchpad with buttons part of the touchpad. It’s okay for day to day use, but a pain if accuracy is needed.
Perhaps knowing this is why there’s a special “left button” button on the far left of the keyboard? A quick Google showed a lot of weird looking keyboards that weren’t this one, so here’s a photo:

Full size: https://i.imgur.com/whSuOKr.jpg

Having just replaced a laptop with a nice shiny new Dell one – I wouldn’t have believed how totally unusable the touchpad is.

I always look for laptops with touchpads accompanied by three true physical buttons. Both Dell and Lenovo still make those, maybe others too.

so here’s a photo

With two む keys!

Edit: Just zoomed in and I see that they’re stickers. If I remember correctly, a real Japanese keyboard has ろ where you have the right む. But I’m assuming that it’s down to a peculiarity of that particular keyboard rather than something you did deliberately (my ANSI keyboard doesn’t even have a key there).

I always look for laptops with touchpads accompanied by three true physical buttons. Both Dell and Lenovo still make those, maybe others too.

My spec when looking for a laptop was room inside to transfer a 2TB existing disc and the ability to power it from a docking station, i.e. a USB-C connector with the power option. That narrowed the field a lot, and it’s difficult, if not impossible, to try before you buy with Dell.

It may be the driver rather than the hardware at fault. I had an HP laptop with a touchpad that never worked well. After removing Win10 and installing Ubuntu 18.04 (Linux), it’s now absolutely fine. Interestingly Gnome can be set up to recognise a middle mouse click — this can be useful when running a RISC OS emulator (it also has various uses under GNOME—for example double middle clicking a directory opens it in a new tab. And on all Linux systems, middle-click normally inserts an active text selection at the cursor; you don’t need to have copied it to the clipboard.)