It seems pretty clear at this point that Apple is getting ready to release a new mouse, probably with some kind of multi-touch capabilities, that is probably attached to some new iMacs. No one is happier about that than me, as I hate the current Mighty Mouse. But it looks like Apple may not have a chance to create a device that lives up to that name this time around, as someone else has won the trademark for the name “Mighty Mouse.”
Man & Machine, a company which makes computer peripherals, says it has been granted the trademark on “Mighty Mouse” from the United States Patent and Trademark Office as of yesterday. Sure enough, it’s there on the USPTO site. For over 5 years, the company says that it has used the name for its line of mice that are “rugged, hygienic, waterproof.” The company has a press release for the trademark decision; clearly, they are jazzed about the win.
And they should be. Though they never mention Apple by name, they do say that “Others have used the name Mighty Mouse for their computer mice and have sought registration of that trademark, but now the United States government has spoken.”
Perhaps the U.S. government wasn’t a fan of Apple’s poorly executed mouse either. And now it looks like unless they want a trademark fight, or to pay Man & Machine a lot of money, the new mouse will get a new name. iMouse? Apple Mouse? Touch Mouse? Let the guessing begin.
It’s worth noting that “Mighty Mouse” was also the name of a cartoon series, and yes, parts of it are also trademarked, and Apple was using the name with CBS’ permission. But since the cartoon is not a computer peripheral, CBS didn’t have a claim to the name in that realm, apparently (though they tried).
[Thanks Clifton]
I bet it will be attached to the keyboard.
You mean physically, without a cord? No wireless alternative? Some sort of touch/trackpad? I sincerely doubt that..
Though of course, connecting a wired mouse to your keyboard has already long been a possibility with Apple’s keyboards.
I introduce the iMouse. A cordless, touch sensitive mouse that can be charged remotely (like your toothbrush). And whenever the laser does not detect a surface (like when sitting on the couch) the touch sensitive surface no longer functions to scroll, but to actually control your mouse. Use 1 finger to control it, and 2 fingers to scroll.
Best bet so far?
Mousse, perhaps?
“then me” should be “than me”.
yes, thx.
We can only hope Apple releases a wireless keyboard with multi-touch trackpad on it (like I saw in one google product video, but somehow it never came to market). If thats the case, Apple can keep their mouse.
no wireless keyboard please…
stop polluting the world with batteries
Like this one? http://www.crun...touch-trackpad/
Wireless -1
No mouse -1
I want a mouse, damnit.
Good riddance! I really hated that thing.
Agreed. Though you’re much more succinct than my 11 paragraphs on the matter.
http://www.tech...-please-fix-it/
Why does it matter? Grab a $19 USB mouse from Best Buy like I do. Works just as well.
Yeah seriously.. Right clicking is a chore, and the ball would get stuck constantly.
you’;re right. it was about time they changed the name to ‘iMouse’
no, that would probably make me hate it more.
My only hope is that this company will force Apple not only to stop selling the Mighty Mouse in the future, but also retroactively in the past, undoing all the anger and frustration I’ve suffered at their hands over the years and ushering in a new golden age for all mankind.
i have that same hope.
Ohhh! The United States government has spoken! Ohhh!
Glad I live in Canada.
+1
on second thought you live in canada.
-1
I live in Canada also
-5
Canada
To retaliate, Apple should ship them a container full of hockey-puck mice to force them into a carpal tunnel pandemic.
Yes Tomas and Veronica I totally agree. The most hands on use gadget that we all need, seems the most neglected aspect of rudimentary design. Being an arthritic sufferer I tend to favor a trackball mouse, and am set to get another, since my middle finger seems to have developed a mind of its own and spontaneously frustrates my navigation with any of the right click functions, that I don’t need at any one time.
Leave it to Apple to make something called a Mighty Mouse. I’m waiting for them to make a Modest Mouse.
That would turn Apple into the fruit that ate itself. And that wouldn’t bode well for the company’s future.
Mighty? Modest? How about, a Peeuuunee Mouse? Or, what the heck, call a spade a spade, and call it, iRat.
wwwtwitter.com redirects to techcrunch. Interesting…
Busted uspto link. Might need to clear your cookies to see it busted.
yeah sorry, looks like they break over time, so i added a link to the search results on their page.
McPhaiL? iCrap? McCrap? iPHaiL?
I think all but iCrap should be free of trademark issues, and describe their keyboard and mice well.
I actually love their latest keyboards (the non-wireless version with numpad that is). Typing is slick and smooth and the design is quite pleasing to me.
+1
I’m using an Apple Mighty Mouse right now and it is A W E S O M E
love it as well, but my scroll ball is dirty, and doesn’t work anymore, however it was way better before it broke.
Yeah, the mighty mouse sure did suck, but all you have to do is plug in a regular PC mouse. They only cost like $10.
Let’s be honest: Apple’s Mighty Mouse just plain sucked. The tiny omnidirectional wheel isn’t as useful as a normal wheel when 99% of people scroll in the up/down direction, and the touch sensitive part of the mouse for left and right clicking was gimmicky and annoying.
As great as innovation is, sometimes if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it!
Why the hate? I’ve had mine for 3 years, dropped it plenty of times, and it still works without a problem..
and how often do you clean that damn scroll ball?
One-two times a week, but it’s ok.
It’s ok? Mine got stuck pretty quick, and no cleaning whatsoever ever helped me get rid of it. It was utterly useless. Hell, I switched to a comfortable Microsoft mouse on my iMac.
I still have one on the Mac Pro that I use….. every time I touch it I want to cry a bit.
With Steve Jobs back and with the success of the keyboard on the iPhone, I can see Apple ditching the traditional keyboard and moving to a full-size multi-touch keyboard… that, with the appropriate tap sequence, can convert from a QWERTY keyboard, to a trackpad to a numeric keypad or to a custom key layout for special applications. Finally, a button-free Mac Book Pro!!!
Now that we got that out of the way, I want to see someone come out against the stupid, control-freak menu system on the Mac.
I mean, c’mon, my app is my app, and its menus are its menus. Why does the MacOS need to get in the middle?
It’s bad enough as it is, but it gets particularly retarded when you’re using an extra monitor and you have to reach all the way across from one corner of one screen to the top of another to access the app’s menus.
Object-oriented, anyone?
Then don’t use OSX. This has been one of their primary design principles since the beginning. I for one think it is excellent.
Unfortunately, that’s exactly what I’m forced to do now, for the most part. Although there are lot of things I like in the Mac, it just slows me down.
I love it, building the menu bar into applications makes evreything take up more space, and makes everything feel constricted. Afterall, inorder to use the menu’s on windows, you still need to have that application in the front. Menu bar is the greatest feature of mac OS X over windows for me.
In order to even *see* your app’s menus on the Mac, you need it to be in the foreground.
Maybe I’m just an efficiency-freak – any day I prefer tools & features that enhance my productivity.
To put this back in context, when I first started using the Mac, I hated the mouse, I hated the not having right-click context menus (many long time Mac users don’t even know it exists!), navigating back & forth through a deep directory path … and of course the menus.
I prefer having more control … after all you could always have an option in your Windows app that can let you hide your menus (and some apps such as Windows Media Player do), but what can one do to get menus on my Mac app?
Fitt’s Law.
Keyboard menu shortcuts.
Command-tab app switching.
If you’re mousing across two screens to access a menu command, you are not an efficiency freak, you’re a masochist.
You can also switch the menu to the other screen.
To even suggest that Apple’s global menu bar should be replaced with app menus in the window demonstrates such a devastating lack of understanding it’s hard to fathom.
Just stick to Windows, it obviously works for you.
Why didn’t Apple patent the use of “mouse” as a peripheral way back when they acquired the technology from Xerox?
Since we are cursed with apple perhperals at uni on the computers, one can only hope that the new mouse will not require you to lift your left finger off the mouse inorder to do a right click like the retarded mighty mouse. every other mouse has 2 seperate switches for a reason. Apple had to try to be different and the result sucked.
Do you have an Apple mouse? I have the wireless Mighty Mouse and just programed the right click to be a right click? I don’t have to lift my fingers or anything. It’s just programed as the secondary button under system preferences.
the new name – iRat
Apple is a fan of minimalist, I bet the iRat is gonna be one big ‘multi-touch’ pad/mouse. No buttons, no scroll, no nothing. Plain and simple.
big mouse == rat. makes sense.
also if it’s big and flattish, then it would be a pie-rat.
This will cause huge consequences in regards to patent and trademarking of the term mighty mouse. If apple wants to release this new mouse with the mighty mouse moniker, the issue should be dealt with far in advance.
Nobody would want the annoyance of lawsuits attached to their new product line
I am using the Mighty Mouse 5 from Man & Machine. They have replaced the scroll wheel with buttons. Its just great I would never go back!
Never got the hate over the old Mini Mouse. Remember what it replaced? I use this mouse exclusively and like the functionality. Scrolling side to side in Photoshop and Illustrator is way better than before.
Its awesome.
The market share of Apple in the PC market is 7-8%
Market niche.
Then forget about it.
Netbooks are more important.
But they have 90% in the above $1000 market.
hey i think that most of the people are now turning towards laptops….mouse world is now old
Laptops, netbooks, smartphones, iPhones, iPod touch, touch screen tablets. You’re right, who cares about the mouse. It’ll be as useful as a disk drive.
Apple has no way !
I have a wireless “Mighty Mouse” from Apple and it works fine for me. The track ball has gotten stuck because some folk in my household have sweaty hands, but I just followed the directions from the Apple site on cleaning it and everything is fine. As for batteries in landfills, I use rechargeable batteries and swap them out as needed.
Really, so what? Who Cares? Such crap and hype over a mouse, trademarks, patents…. I’m sick and tired of the trolls and their suits. Mouse? A cheap $2 one is good enough. Besides, everything will be touchscreen before you know it.
maybe the next one will be able to right click better than half the damn time.
I’m on my second mighty mouse. It only scrolls sideways now and every trick in the book doesn’t fix the scroll wheel problem. Fingers crossed the new one is more gunk-proof.
They should just make a basic mouse with a cord but give the iphone the capability of being a wireless mouse for your computer.
Maybe they will make it smaller and instead of mighty mouse it will be mini mouse…. but that’s a whole other copyright issue haha.
“probably with some kind of multi-touch capabilities”
Dear God NO!!!
The last thing I need is ANOTHER input device to add in a touchscreen or touch-surface at the expense of physical buttons.
They exist for a reason, TACTILE FEEDBACK. When im using my computer, I don’t want to mush the face of my mouse and hope the click registered, I don’t constantly look at my mouse when using my computer. The fact that I can feel that the button did press, and hear the click, I feel is important to the user input.
You get a feel pretty quickly for how much force from your finger it requires because the button will give and click. The puck-mouse was a DISASTER for me because it required almost no force, and the entire mouse was a button, ridiculously easy to click all over the place by accident.
Touchscreens work (Although I like and prefer touchscreens, I do NOT prefer them in lieu of tossing away physical keyboards/keypads) because typically you are looking at the screen when using them and the buttons generally have an animation when “pressed”, this does not work on devices that you are not keeping an eye on while using. The touch-buttons on my PS3 for example are a pain, half the time when the system lags I can’t tell if the button pressed or not, there is a REASON, other than cost, that the slim uses normal buttons again.
Taking away tactile and audible feedback for the sake of making a device look flashy and futuristic is just asking for trouble and annoyance, our brains are designed to RESPOND to this kind of feedback, removing it would be like having a body with no nerves, being unable to feel anything. Electric car manufacturers are now starting to add FAKE engine sounds to their vehicles because a car being completely silent is so unnerving (not to mention dangerous to pedestrians) I used to preach that Apple goes too far with focusing on form over function, but now they are starting to creep into form over COMMON SENSE.
You can argue a track pad, but a damn MOUSE does not need multi-touch, or any “touch” at all, there is nothing wrong with physical damn buttons. Its like trying to improve the wheel by making it triangle-shaped.
It amazes me that Apple — the company most intimately tied to the mouse — has been SO bad at creating good mice since the original iMac came out. The mice that used to come with the old Macs were pretty good (for one button mice) but since then Apple has tried to be too-clever-by-half by ‘reinventing the wheel’ with each new mouse and failed dismally each time. What’s wrong with a shiny white plastic version of a nice Logitech design? Do you ever see people complaining online about how deficient Logitech mice are…? No!
(That being said, I would like to see apple release a multitouch trackpad for desktop use — I miss the trackpad when I am using my MacBook Pro docked with a monitor and keyboard.)