Logitech launches $500 rodent

It doesn't match their Mac Book Pro, Mac Pro with Apple Monitor, or anything else in their wardrobes. Just waiting for someone to decry it as ugly.

who would need them? macs arent designed to be used, they're designed to be looked at.

I have two brothers who are aeronautical engineers, and they love their space mice! Guess I will have to tell them each to buy one for the other.

Shame all the contracts are going abroad! Does it support polish language?

The product's website indicates there are drivers for Mac OS X 10.4.6 or later.

Well, the integrated screen is a bit dubious (if not quite in the class of the mouse which flashed LEDs to tell you when you had mail, because obviously you have eyeballs in the palm of your hand and are incapable of looking at the screen). But it's nice to see 3DConnexion doing something - even if it's not doing some kind of funky deal with Butterfly Haptics, to whom I suggested they might like to talk last SIGGRAPH. I'd still like to see a spaceball with finger grips so you could squeeze or stretch it and provide resizing as well as orientation. Ah, I remember when they were SpaceTech...

I think I'll be sticking to my spaceballs, however shiny the new device may be.

As for Mac support, I believe there's been Photoshop support for spaceballs for a long time, so I'd *hope* there were Apple drivers. (This reminds me - I must see whether my spaceball talks to Photoshop CS4's 3D modelling components.)

Now, back to designing my 3D UI with a spaceball in one hand and a SensAble haptic pen in the other (and a Wiimote bolted to my head). A shame the Dimentor Inspector seemed to disappear without trace.

Maybe it is the most complex ever, but not the most expensive.

If memory serves me, about a decade ago there were "3D mouses" that cost 5k GBP or something similar.

Even nowadays we can find far more expensive stuff: http://www.vrealities.com/3dmouse.html

It doesn't support Mac, yet the LCD display is using all Mac icons? Seems fishy to me.

Doesn't really matter, no serious CAD software works on Macs anyway.

Seems no Mac-troll has found the bottom of this discussion. All the offensive stuff remained unanswered by the usual flames. Only substantiated comments from the fruity-ones-in-the-know.
Strange, indeed.

Doesn't it have too many buttons for the average Mac user? Considering that Apple refers to their 'Mighty Mouse' as a 'two-button wonder' I think it might be a bit above them. Also, wouldn't they get it confused with their iPhone?. Could lead to all sorts of mouse / phone confusion disasters???

how do you click?

For anyone who's genuinely confused as to how these things work...

In spite of the "rodent" in the subject title, it's not a mouse - there's no absolute movement, so it's no substitute for the average desktop pointing device. You click with the other hand, which probably *does* contain a mouse (or something else click-capable). You effectively "hold" your 3D object with one of these controllers, so you can spin it around and move it, and then you use a mouse to manipulate it when you've got the object viewed how you want.

At least, that's one way of using them.

I'd always wanted to get around to building a Robot Wars entry using one of these as a controller (to give absolute movements and rotation - not so much anything involving the vertical axis). I'd then have put a pistol grip joystick on the bottom, to support it in the other hand. Ah, the amount of random stuff I'd do given infinite time and money. I just need to invent practical fusion reactors...

What's not to like? Black, shiny, lots of buttons...

But where's the trigger?

Im gana get this just for my desktop
its overkill but looks farking awesome, and has lots of functions, I wonder if it will be any good for gaming???