Recently, Apple Inc. introduced the Magic Mouse, a computer mouse without any buttons or scroll wheels to push the experience even further. The are doing this by introducting a multi-touch pad on top of the mouse where usually the buttons have been. One might think there are now all the cool gestures you already know from your Macbook – but unfortunately there is no option to do things like pinch zoom or doing a double tap instead of a real click. But since it’s a trackpad there is still hope this things could come with a software update later on. But anyway, the scrolling is best! Like with the iPhone – but without overscrolling (hopefully also supplied with some update sometime later)…

Another company, WarMouse also introduced their vision of a mouse a couple days ago – but with a slightly different view on things like usability and design: OpenOffice Mouse. The main idea is to have almost every function of OpenOffice.org mapped to a key for quick execution. Therefore they equip it with 18 buttons, a scrollwheel and a joystick (see Feature creep). Since I wasn’t able to try it myself yet I should refrain from talking badly about it. But still, it is hard to believe this is not meant as a joke. I checked the calendar for “April 1st” several times on the day I read the news…