Ah, okay.
Mine doesn't have the separate button, which kind of makes it the smaller version of this new one. If I had kept my desktop Mac I'd've bought one of these already. (8+D

Mark

£25 for an Apple AA rechargeable battery charger…

I know I have drunk the Coolade but I can see these catching on. Not for gaming of course but I would love one. In China they can be used for character input too. (A big market methinks)

It's 25 quid for a battery charger and 6 very high spec rechargeable batteries. Your standard rechargeables are.. fairly cheap these days but the equivalent 'brand' batteries with that spec are about a tenner for 4. So assuming the same price you're getting a pretty compact charger for a tenner. Which is a bit on the expensive side but only by say a quid or so.

It's a bit of pain it'll only charge two at once though.

Looks interesting, but expensive for what it is. I can maybe see some people using them instead of a mouse for certain tasks, but it's never going to replace the mouse for accurate work. Plus the fact that I don't even have an Intel Mac yet, never mind 10.6.4 - bit steep on the minimum requirements if you ask me.

I'd be more interested if they integrated a slightly smaller version into the Apple keyboard. Something a bit like this...



...but then I guess they'd have to do a left-handed and a right-handed version! I suppose that's why it's a separate unit, so you can place it either side. Trouble is, it's one more device that requires batteries - if they ever did the keyboard option, I'd buy one assuming my Macs were modern enough (they aren't at the moment). But on its own, £59 is too much for me when you'll still need a mouse for other tasks.

Still, nice addition, just needs to be cheaper.

no reason they couldnt make it detachable, and put connection points for it on both sides of the keyboard. or would that mess up the aesthetics too much?

Do you know what spec they are? I read somewhere they're the 1900mAh variery.

You can get a 4 pack of Duracell Stay Charged for less than £7 and a charger with 2 x 2000mAh batteries for £9.99 saving £8 over the Apple one.

I guess you pay the Apple premium though if thats what you want.

I hate track pads. USB mice, they're the future.

Trackpads are usable, but then so are my legs; I just don't want to walk everywhere

£13 wireless mouse with 6 month battery time FTW!

EDIT - Did anyone else read 'Jumbo Trackpants. Would you?' initially?

And the answer's always 'no'

Do you really need to try it out to know that?

I'd imagine they are that or more. I've got some Energiser rechargeables that are 2000mAh that weren't even labelled as anything other than standard, so you'd need at least that to get away with calling them 'high performance'.
Actually, it's a bit odd. I've got three packs of essentially the same Energiser rechargeables here. Some are 1700mAh, some are 2000 and one set are 2500. Bought in the same shop for, as far as I remember, pretty much the same price. What the hell are they playing at?


The Apple charger looks to be a fair bit smaller than the one you linked, which is a factor if you're travelling with it but not at home. And the 'deal' you have gives you 4 long charge batteries and two standard ones, plus they're different ratings. A lot of devices are finicky about rechargeables so it's generally not wise to mix them around - for example I have an LED lantern/torch that will work fine as long as one of the batteries in it is non-rechargeable, even if the other three are. But put four rechargeables in it and it simply doesn't work. There's a certain advantage to having similar batteries that are 'matched' to the charger for consistency's sake.

I suspect Apple don't expect it to be a major selling item so they are upping their profit margin on it, because they're losing something on economies of scale. At the end if the day though it's not like they're using some proprietary battery format and forcing you to buy their charger; if you don't want to buy it, you don't have to.

Jon

I'm struggling to come up with anything that you'd still need a mouse for other than perhaps playing a game.
Can you clue me in?

Mark

It is all the things that a mouse can't do.

It can't pinch and zoom. It can't rotated images and objects on the page. Three finger and four finger gestures can be added by extra buttons I suppose but I can see so many more reasons to have a multi touch multi gesture trackpad. I don't have the minimum spec to run this one but I do like it a lot.

I just wonder if it will be widely copied by other manufactures.

a back button? i cant imagine web browsing without one of those.

?!? You have a button for that?!?
I use a mouse on my desktop Mac at work as well as my PC, and in my whole history of using desktop computers I have never had a back button on the mouse.
I either use the back button in the browser window or I use keyboard shortcuts.

Mark