Max’s Blog … LOL!!!: entry

Apple’s MightyMouse (or the default new mouse) rocks in most of it’s aspects. The mouse is … white, it has three buttons (which all look like they’re one), it has two touch-sensitive side-buttons which I rarely use and it has a scrollball. I don’t need the side-buttons, I don’t need the center-third button - but I do need that ball. This ball is so amazing in that you can scroll up, down, left, right and in every other direction you can think of (like 21.6° East). ‘Cause it turns in directions other than up and down, Apple has called it a scrollball rather than a scrollwheel. :-D

Down-Scrolling Stopped!

So, for the past week or so, this scrollball stopped allowing me to scroll down. Shock! Scrolling down is like the most important movement on this little thing!!!
After banging my head against the wall, throwing keyboards and old mice around, blowing the hell out of my lungs and into the areas around the scrollball, it started functioning again.
Though, the solution didn’t last it’s years, it came back about 24 hours later.
I was close to rampaging the closest Apple Store … which obviously wasn’t the best idea; so I typed in some keywords into Google to find out how to clean my mouse.

The not-working Solutions

What came up first was a nice little Support Article by Apple suggesting me to take a cleaning cloth and wipe the mouse that way. Outcome: Didn’t work!
I went through a couple of other tutorials suggesting me to take a vacuum cleaner and suck all the dust out of the mouse (didn’t work), slicing the mouse apart (would work - but I didn’t get the mouse opened), suggestions to wash my hands before using the mouse (didn’t work - LOL) and another one encouraging me to run a piece of sticky tape through the scrollball socket (didn’t work ’cause my fingers are just not made for such fiddly things).
All of them failed! I thought about sending the mouse to Apple and getting a repaired one - but I couldn’t imagine myself working without this mouse for longer than a week.

The solution that worked (at least it still does)

The trick that nailed was quite simple. Take a clean piece of white paper, place it on your desk, turn your mouse up-side-down and run it over the surface (just like you would be playing with some little toy-car). Do it softly and for quite a while. Turn your mouse back up and there you go, it scrolls!

I’ve scrolled again for the past 3 hours and it still works perfectly. If it would fail again in the near future, then I’d send it to Apple ’cause I ain’t wanna go through this shit on a daily basis. It’s not like this mouse is a real one!