Magic Mouse Not Working For Some

Apple's new Magic Mouse combines a sleek, streamlined look with a flashy surface that supports multi-touch gestures. Drag or swipe a finger or two across the Magic Mouse's surface, and your Mac will respond in a way that seems almost like magic. But when the multi-touch feature fails to work, which seems to be the case for a number of users, the Magic Mouse becomes just another two-button mouse, like the one you probably threw out many years ago.

Courtesy of Apple

Individuals who purchased a Magic Mouse separately (not as part of a Mac system) are reporting problems with either the installation of the Wireless Mouse software or the use of the Mouse preference pane, which the Wireless Mouse software is supposed to update with the new gesture support required by the Magic Mouse.

It appears that the Wireless Mouse software is being applied, but after the Mac is rebooted, the system fails to detect the Magic Mouse. The preference pane can't provide gesture support to a mouse it can't see, so the Magic Mouse ends up working like a two-button mouse; it doesn't even support scrolling.

The problem is believed to be a conflict with other preferences, such as a third-party keyboard or USB preferences used by other devices. In my case, the Magic Mouse works fine on a fresh install of Snow Leopard (updated to 10.6.1, plus the Wireless Mouse software), but fails to work on the same Mac Pro when I boot from my usual startup drive, which contains preference panes for many third-party products and applications. Trying to figure out which piece of software is causing the conflict has been an exercise in frustration. Even after I removed every third-party preference pane, the Magic Mouse continued to behave as a magic-less mouse.

According to various postings on Apple's Discussions forum, some users have been able to get the Magic Mouse to work by removing one or more of the following third-party preferences panes: USB Overdrive, Microsoft Keyboard, Logitech Control Center. No such luck for me, but I was able to use the Magic Mouse with the fresh install, so you'll be seeing a full review of the Magic Mouse soon.