Well, we were certainly surprised by the, ah, enthusiasm with which people have responded to the OOMouse. The reaction ranged from a deep sense of sexual pleasure to discussions of whether we are insane or on drugs, which makes us wonder what would have been the reaction if we had included the two side toggle switches in the original design. You think you can’t handle 52 simultaneous on-mouse commands… try 208! Frankly, we find ourselves a little disappointed with some of the Slashdotters and Engadgeteers who think the OOMouse is simply too much buttony goodness to handle; we have always been dedicated to the concept of “more, better, faster” and would have thought that more members of the technogeek community would be too.
Slashdot said: “We couldn’t decide if this was a protest against Apple’s new magic mouse, an elaborate practical joke, or just plain insanity run amok. In any case, it is hard to imagine a world in which so many tiny buttons on a mouse make sense.”
Engadget declared: “OpenOfficeMouse isn’t free, isn’t pretty. Think it’s only gamers that require mice with more buttons than a scientific calculator? Then you’ve probably not met a die hard OpenOffice user, who now finally have a mouse to call their own in the form of the OpenOfficeMouse.”
Gizmodo provided perhaps a bit too much information: “OpenOfficeMouse Is An 18 Button Freak, But I Want It. 18 programmable buttons. E-I-G-H-T-E-E-N! Forget the 512k of flash memory, analog Xbox 360-style joystick, basic scroll wheel and whatever-else-is-in-there. 18 buttons! Yes, I’m a button lover. Yes, I just had an orgasm.”
To put to rest the questions that kept popping up in the comments at the various sites: yes, the OOMouse is real. Yes, it has an absolute boatload of buttons… and they all have assignable double-clicks! Yes, we’re probably amok with insanity. No, we’re not on drugs, at least not of late. Yes, we think Apple’s buttonless approach is sexy, stupid, and limiting. Look at it this way. If you have a Magic Mouse and I have an OOMouse and we compete in any FPS, RTS, MMO, or OpenOffice.org Calc-off, you are going to be utterly obliterated. OBLITERATED. It won’t even be close. So, if you want sleek and superficial style, by all means, go ahead and buy a Magic Mouse. We don’t mind. But if you want raw power, flexibility, and speed, speed, speed, you will do much better with an OOMouse .
nOfficeMouse Is An 18 Button Freak, But I Want It
18 programmable buttons. E-I-G-H-T-E-E-N! Forget the 512k of flash memory, analog Xbox 360-style joystick, basic scroll wheel and whatever-else-is-in-there. 18 buttons! Yes, I’m a button lover. Yes, I just had an orgasm.
TheGZeus said on November 7th, 2009 , 7:56 pm
Congrats!
You don’t know you’re a playa until you’ve got haters.
I’m going to pre-order once I can.
I’ve been a mouse hater for 2 years. I use StumpWM(see also: Ratpoison) as my window manager, Conkeror as my browser, and Emacs for almost everything else.
A 1/2/3 button mouse is just too limiting. It’s only useful for navigating menus and buttons, not making actions occur.
This is the first mouse I’ve _wanted_ to use.
Want to copy a DOM node in Conkeror? Click with L3. Want to run a shell script on an image? Click with R4…
A mouse that makes sense to use with Emacs??? DELICIOUS INSANITY.
Can you assign an event to releasing the button? That would be insanely killer. Say I’m in the GIMP; I drag with L6 and it draws a box, when I release it runs unsharp-mask on the selection.
Is that possible? If not, it should be.
I don’t think I’d run out of buttons and double-clicks, but I also want to maximise efficiency and elegance.
Christ, the map-ability of this brings mouse-oriented programs into the world of Emacs, AutoCAD(autolisp scripting) and many other such things.
The huge macro length makes anything into a scriptable app…
If you added mouse-button-chording you’d get your 208… at least…
TheGZeus said on November 7th, 2009 , 9:23 pm
Also, on Linux there are more modifier keys, which you should support.
Hyper, Super, Alternate, Meta, Control and the AltGr which sends characters like æßå᪀¡ etc on an English keyboard layout.
Yeah, not every app supports every modifier, but the ones that do often need them for special functions.
Otherminded said on November 8th, 2009 , 12:21 am
Lefties left out in the cold? I looked in the FAQ, etc, and I’m feeling chilly.
TheGZeus said on November 8th, 2009 , 1:35 am
@otherminded:
Yeah, it’s a sad fact that specialty products have to cater to the largest market segment they can while keeping costs down.
Making it reversible would increase the cost noticably, though I just came up with a relatively low-cost solution.
I’d explain it, but it’s a patentable concept, and wanna get mine someday if I can get it.
Open source design and the OpenOfficeMouse | FactoryCity said on November 8th, 2009 , 2:47 am
[...] To me, the OpenOfficeMouse seems like such a typical product from the open source community. The press release waxes on about the features, implicitly presupposing that more must be better: [...]
Daniel said on November 8th, 2009 , 6:29 am
I LOVE YOU GUYS. What a surprisingly exciting gadget. Hurry up and ship Haha!!
Please make a left handed version so I can buy two, set up a multi pointer X server, and throw away my keyboard. Wouldn’t that be cool, eh? Think about the increase in productivity…
By the way, any ideas of what would go into the gaming version that isn’t in this one?
I LOVE YOU GUYS
uberVU - social comments said on November 9th, 2009 , 4:00 am
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Cyber_Fusion said on November 9th, 2009 , 1:50 pm
Finally a mouse for serious programmers. Not a buttonless rat for people with too much “Stoopid” in the brains. And the tought of enabling it to be a numpad with a deadkey is really really usefull, as I really prefer a numpad-less keyboard
jbh said on November 12th, 2009 , 8:31 pm
I was a skeptic but you won me over with this:
“Look at it this way. If you have a Magic Mouse and I have an OOMouse and we compete in any FPS, RTS, MMO, or OpenOffice.org Calc-off, you are going to be utterly obliterated. OBLITERATED. It won’t even be close.”
How true. Since you will be spending ample time with the mouse, the initial learning curve isn’t as important as the potential it holds after mastery.