Mighty Mouse confuses right and left clicks.

OK... what I would like to know is.

How can people say thier right mouse click works 100% of the time?? This seems to me to not be a hardware issue, because the right button stops working for a few clicks immidiately following a left click.

For control purposes, I do not move my finger from the same spot, not do I change pressure when I click the right mouse button. (I have tried all combinations of area/pressure and always the same results).

Once the right button starts working, it consistently works 100% of the time. THe problem lies in it STARTING to work after a left click.

75% of the time it works right away. 25% of the time, the button will not work for about 1-4 clicks.

This renders the right button useless to me.

I guess I will try exchanging my mouse at an Apple Store to be sure. Do you think they will take one that was bought from the online store?

I will follow up.

Liam, did you install the software that came with the mouse? I read somewhere that you won't be able to set the button commands without installing the software.

Frozo, have you repaired permissions since installing the software. While this is probably a long shot. After new software installations I always repair permissions.

Joy, I revisited your suggestion, and I was wrong--you were right! I thought since I was resting my index finger only slightly on the left button, that it wasnt interfering. BUT...

THE SOLUTION IS THIS:

You must ENTIRELY REMOVE your left mouse finger from the mouse BEFORE pressing the right click! Dont ask me why they made it so sensitive, but they did.

And this makes things extremely annoying, and makes for unneeded movment of your fingers, which will cause strss over time. I alreaay read an article about someones finger tingling.

Funnily enough, the it doesnt work the other way around. Left button takes precedence.

Wish they could fix this!!!

Aloha, well my Mighty Mouse came today, and I have had no problems setting it up or working it. Check hand placement if left and right clicks are a problem. Sometime if your index finger is on the left side it makes MM do a left click even if you "right click" I set mine up to open safari with the top button, it rocks! I can't wait till Apple comes out with a Bluetooth version. I'm so glad to get rid of my Micosoft 3 button.

I'm a lefty, and the original setting were for a lefty mouse. After installing the Might Mouse software, I discovered that to make my Mighty Mouse a lefty I have to set the buttons for a righty and vice versa.

I later installed Mighty Mouse on other machines, but set the preferences for the original mouse back to a righty before installing the Mighty Mouse software. Everything works properly there, but on this first machine, I must set the settings backwards to get the behavior I want.

I have an open case with AppleCare that was sent to engineering, and I'm 4 days into waiting for a response about how to delete the Mighty Mouse software, set the original preference back to righty, then re-do the install.

FWIW
I have found that the Mighty Mouse works a whole lot better using USB Overdrive rather than the Apple driver. For one thing, cursor speed and acceleration controls are much more refined and allow the pointer speed to be set very fast without loosing accuracy. Left and right clicks, and horizontal and vertical scrolling are enabled by default. I was also able to program the scroll ball click to launch "Expose". I don't really need the side buttons which is good because they are very awkward to operate. In general, don't think people are going to realize how nice this mouse is unless they use this driver because it's so much better than Apple's. Also, Mr Montalcini is working on an update that will allow better programing of the scroll ball click and side buttons.

DD

I found this problem easy to duplicate, though my mighty mouse works fine in regard to right vs left clicking, 'normally'.

I simply slid my hand down until my fingers click just in front of an imaginary line drawn vertically through the center of the side buttons. Anytime I'm close to that back area, it becomes easy to have the mouse interpret a left click as a right click... Perhaps you're one of the folks who keeps their hands well back when mousing?

InDesign does not support scrolling (nor does Illustrator)...it's not the mouse. I use the PowerMate controller which supports "application specific" programing to move around in these apps. For example, you can program left and right rotation to invoke the page up and page down keys.

DD

Hi. For those of you having Mighty Mouse button problems, I just talked to Apple a couple minutes ago. Turns out that the Left Primary Button is the default Primary button. And, although my Mighty Mouse came out of the box with "Spotlight" already programmed to that button, Spotlight would not work off that button. Spotlight could be assigned to and it worked on all the other buttons except the Left Primary Button. That button's dropdown menu has "Spotlight" included as an assignable option but it evidently should not have been there in the first place. If what this tech rep told me is correct, then the manual that comes with Mighty Mouse is wrong also because it clearly says that Spotlight can be assigned to any button. However, my Mighty Mouse does not work like the book says it would work. Hope this helps some. The fact that the Left Primary button is the default Primary button should clear up some of the comments about the button usefullness I hope. Gene

Same problem here, but only on the machine that I had previously used left-handed--that is, with primary and secondary reversed--with a different mouse. Worst part of this: The preference plist initially sets both buttons to "primary", which is really secondary! Hard to do much in that state. My solution: temporarily connect a one-button mouse. Then edit com.apple.driver.AppleHIDMouse.plist to change the Value of Button2 from 1 to 2.

My mighty M is behaving like yours. Any news? I am getting crazy.

I have the same problem as yours. I haven't been able to run my Mighty. I am confused here. What should I do? Thanks

I believe some of the confusion about the clicking behavior is due to a design flaw in the size and position of the sensors in Mighty Mouse. These do not seem to have taken account of the fact that the middle finger is usually significantly longer than the index and ring.

If a right handed person normally uses their index finger for left clicks and the middle finger for right, AND has a mousing style that involves moving the position of their fingers from front to back, then as they move their fingers towards the back there will be a band of about a centimeter, between the rear halves of the side buttons, where the shorter index finger will have moved off the left sensor, while the longer middle finger is still over the right sensor. In this situation any click, whether right or left, will be interpreted as a right click (as if the left finger had been lifted off the mouse). Once the fingers move far enough back for the middle finger to move off the right sensor then all clicks become left clicks - and the behavior is both objectively and subjectively intuitive.

This is a function of the design and logic and hence objectively quite predictable, but from the point of view of the user it is not and results in unintended right clicks that are experienced as intensely frustrating and unintuitive. This is made more difficult to overcome because ,although the mechanism is consistent, the results will vary with the size and shape of the fingers, the degree to which they are flexed, and the angle at which the mouse is held. All of which increases the uncertainty and confusion.

The solution would seem to be for the sensors to be extended back, either on the left side only, or to provide for left handers, for each side to have a secondary rear extension that was independently switchable by the user. Although this might not eliminate the problem it should reduce it greatly. It might also help to provide some subtle tactile clues as to the position of the sensors.

I had the same problem and thanks to all the different discussion boards out there was able to fix it:

Re-connect your old mouse and switch it back from left-handed use to right-handed use. Then reconnect the MM and you're done.

I was using the Kensington driver for my Bluetooth mouse, and must have switched it to left-handed at some point. I don't have the driver installed, but using the original Apple mouse preferences pane, I reversed the buttons and it's all OK now.

The problem is that the MM driver makes use of this left/right reversed preference, but there is no way to change it using the new MM preference pane. The Apple installer should have set this preference back to "normal" if it wasn't going to use it.