One of Apple’s longest-held conceits is the single-button mouse. For decades the company has championed the idea that the computer mouse should be extremely simple in design. While other computer mice began with two buttons and evolved to include scroll wheels, side buttons, macros, and zooms, Apple has done its best to stick to its original one button design, passionately, compulsively, even as fans began to grumble and the usefulness of right-clicking, scrolling, and zooming, became undeniable. It would be wrong to create a mouse today without these features, and so with great determination Apple has done just that with the Magic Mouse without, somehow, giving in to adding more buttons. The magic part is that it there are no buttons at all thanks to a touch-sensitive shell. Technically the whole mouse is just one big button.

The Magic Mouse is unquestionably Apple. Anyone familiar with the company could guess what it looks like, unseen. It’s very simple and completely white. It is ergonomic without sacrificing any minimalistic style and sturdy thanks to a metal base, which features two plastic guide-runners to make it easier to glide across surfaces.

It works through a system of hidden-clicks and multi-touch gestures, as if Apple removed one of their new touch-enabled trackpads from the new MacBook Pros and draped it over the mouse itself. You can left-click by pressing on the front-left corner, right-click by pressing on the front-right corner or vice versa if you’re left-handed. You can scroll up-and-down by sliding the tip of your finger along the mouse’s spine, starting at its backend and moving along to its nose. You can scroll forwards, backwards, a little at a time, and just like on an iPhone or iPod Touch you can flick the mouse to set the screen scrolling with motion, the best part of the touch controls.

To scroll sideways, to flip through cover art in iTunes or go back-and-forth between visited webpages, you must place two fingertips on the nose of the mouse and swipe them to the left or the right.

Zooming is a bit of a cheat. You use your fingertip to stroke the mouse from back-to-front, just as you would when scrolling, but with the control key on your computer held down. That’s two buttons, and while you do get used to it, and the zoom itself is quite powerful, I’m surprised Apple couldn’t find a mouse-only solution.

In speed and accuracy the mouse falls a little short. A setting menu allows you to adjust the tracking, scrolling, and double-clicking speed, but by default these are set quite low, so even on the highest setting the mouse is merely average. Far slower than what I’m used to and certainly not very useful for playing video games. The motion is smooth and consistent as Apple claims, but speed and accuracy are more important.

Sadly the Magic Mouse is designed only for Apple computers. Apple’s forays into the Windows market, through their iPod, iPhone, iTunes, and Bootcamp products, have been very successful in the sense of motivating many users to make the “switch” and a cool touchscreen mouse would only continue that.

By focusing on Macs only Apple has been able to drop the need for a Bluetooth transmitter. All Macs have Bluetooth built-in, so the mouse can connect directly, and it does so quite easily, even from across the room. This in turn allows Apple to extend the battery life, running for a very long period on just two AAs.

For $69 Apple has certainly delivered an innovative mouse design and one that truly expresses the company’s style and personality. I love the touchscreen gesture controls and the comfort of its simplicity, but wish that it’s tracking speed could reach the limits offered by other mice on the market.