Ah, the Apple USB mouse-- known affectionately to some as "the hockey puck" and not-so-affectionately to others as "that thing I threw out my window." While there are a few of us lurking about who actually like its fingertip-oriented design, the vast majority of people with hands consider its circular shape and tiny dimensions to be the input device equivalent of a pair of stiletto heels that's two sizes too small. Made out of 80 grit sandpaper. With real stilettos inside. Anyway, you get the picture.

Apple has long been rumored to be working on a more "professional" (read: "useable") mouse to ship at least with its Power Mac models, and hopefully with its entire desktop line. When the dirt-dishers speak in whispers of the legendary "REAL Mouse," the two most commonly discussed features are an oblong shape (no more "which way is up?" problems) and multiple buttons. Strangely enough, neither of these wished-for characteristics is addressed directly in Apple Insider's latest spiel on this long-rumored project-- at least, not in a good way.

The report makes no mention of the device's shape at all, which means that it might turn out to resemble the Sydney Opera House for all we know. On the subject of buttons, well, if you've been waiting for Apple to ship a two-button unit, you may not like where this new mouse is allegedly going. When Apple designed its first mouse system, it settled on a single-button design and stuck with it over the years, since human interface experts agreed that more buttons simply equals more confusion. Even after Apple adopted contextual menus (invoked with a right-click on Windows), it continued to ship a single-button mouse and forced us to Control-click to pop them up. Needless to say, we weren't terribly pleased at having to put down the remote every so often just to press the Control key. (Then we found FinderPop, but that's a whole 'nother story...)

Well, if Apple Insider is correct, it's time to welcome the next in a long line of Apple innovations-- the no-button mouse. Yes, rather than baffling us with a bevy of user-programmable buttons that may well make our heads explode with options, Apple has gone one step further in its neverending quest to make our computing experiences as Zen-like as possible. Sources claim that users apparently "squeeze or push down" on this new mouse to activate a click. If this sounds like a genuine ergonomic disaster waiting to happen, hey, repetitive stress disorder is a small price to pay for the ultimate in simplicity-- that's the philosophy behind the tiny round mouse in the first place, right? In fact, we're starting to wonder if perhaps this new mouse doesn't have a click function at all, since a click-free computing experience would be nirvana-- simple and safe. Just move the cursor around and look at the pretty Desktop picture...

Oh yeah, we suppose we should mention that this new Apple mouse is reportedly a works-on-any-surface optical unit, like Microsoft's Intellimouse Explorer, and it's also supposedly a mouse without a tail-- Apple's bringing its current obsession with wireless to its input devices. But while some may consider Apple's wireless rip-off of Microsoft's rebranding of Hewlett-Packard technology to be "innovative," we all know where the real innovation lies, right? Down with mouse buttons! You have nothing to lose but your clicks!

Far be it from us to oppose angst for angst's sake, given that it's pretty much what we thrive on, but for those of you who are still bemoaning the apparent fate of Apple's Game Sprockets developer APIs, we should mention that a couple of things have set our fevered minds at rest. When ZDNet first broke its doom-and-gloom story, it sounded like Apple was throwing Sprockets out the window and driving a stake through its recent promises to make the Mac a solid gaming platform. Disappointed quotes from living saint Mark Adams of Westlake Interactive only fueled the panic.

Since then, ZDNet (whose Mac coverage is usually pretty negative-- given that Intel has its hands in the mix, we shouldn't be surprised) has backpedalled a tiny bit in the form of a Matthew Rothenberg opinion followup. Matthew (or, as we now like to call him, "Matt the Rothenberg," given his writing style's suspicious similarity to a certain eating utensil that's missing in action) notes that "it would be nuts for a PC company with as much riding on the consumer market as Apple to abandon the games market. Clearly, Apple must be working on an alternative strategy for games and Mac OS X." Well, duh. Even the original "sky is falling" ZDNet report noted that-- while downplaying the fact severely, of course. But we're slightly appeased even by Matt's half-hearted assurance that Apple's only problem has been communicating its new strategy to the games developer community. Heck, we're easy.

What really cheered us up, though, was receiving mail from Chris DeSalvo, the man who, until recently, actually "ran the Sprockets engineering team at Apple." Now, if de-emphasizing Sprockets in Mac OS X were a serious mistake, you'd expect the project leader to be pretty peeved, right? Well, guess what? According to Chris, "there are GOOD reasons for the state of Sprockets on X." For instance, he reports that fewer than five commercial games that used SoundSprocket ever shipped, so "why bother porting?" InputSprocket, as previously reported, will be replaced with the HID Manager, which Chris calls "infinitely better." Almost all of DrawSprocket is going into Mac OS X. And NetSprocket was open-sourced several months ago; work is already underway to bring it to Mac OS X. In summary, Chris says "the picture is pretty good," and that's good enough for us. Hopefully the fears about older Sprockets-built games not running on Mac OS X will turn out to be unfounded, and the only remaining issue will be whether developers who have relied heavily on Sprockets in the past will be willing to port their code over to Mac OS X's new APIs. Given how cool Mac OS X is destined to be, we're not too concerned.

We don't want to get into a whole cultural stereotyping thing, here, but do you all remember the Mike Myers character "Dieter" on Saturday Night Live? The one who hosted the German TV show "Sprockets," as in "Now is the time on Sprockets when we dance"? "Touch my monkey"? "Happy as a little girl"? Ah, it's all coming back to you now. Well, normally we'd balk at the generalization that Germans can take everyday, normal subjects and make them twisted and strange, but we have to say, we definitely flashed on Dieter when faithful viewer Jens Baumeister told us what happened to the "Think different" slogan in Germany.

It seems Jens' friend Sebastian was surfing around the German 'net and stumbled upon something rather disturbing. One might expect http://www.thinkdifferent.de/ to be a German site selling Macs, but it's not. Not by a long shot. As it turns out, the site is owned by a company called Bennetts, who is hawking "känguruhfleisch"; that's kangaroo meat, for those who don't grok the language. Now, before you get all outraged or whatever, this isn't just any old kangaroo meat-- it's "low-fat, best quality" kangaroo meat. Mmmmm... Think tasty!

We wonder if Apple is aware that its slogan is being used to sell the flesh of fuzzy, bouncy critters from Down Under? More specifically, we wonder if Uncle Steve the vegan is on board with this plan. We haven't the foggiest idea whether international or German trademark law gives Apple any avenue to take action, but we imagine that if Apple knew that its famous slogan is being used in this fashion, those hyperactive Apple lawyers would be chomping at the bit to do a little "cease and desist"-ing, seizing of domain names, etc. Just a little bit of surreality to add to your day...