I’ve always been a keyboard jockey, using shortcut keys and other tools to avoid going to my pointer device as much as possible. This includes turning on Keyboard Acccess in the Mac’s System Preferences and learning as many keyboard shortcuts as possible. A nice tool my colleague recently pointed out to me is MenuPop by Binary Bakery, which puts an apps menu in a contextual menu for easy keyboard access. It’s essentially the same as what’s built in to MacOS with control-f2, but it displays a mini menu next to the cursor. But even with all these other tools, a lot of time is still spent moving the ever-present pointer to accomplish one thing or another.

Magic Trackpad

Shorty after Apple’s Magic Trackpad came out, I figured I’d give it a shot to see if it would make a difference. My hope was that with the variety of ways to interact with it, the work of controlling that blasted cursor could be shared by all the phalanges and not just Mr. Pointer, whom I believe is the main culprit of my RSI.

If you’ve used any of Apple’s recent laptops, then you’ll already be familiar with the gestures and use of the trackpad, which is essentially what it is — a detached 5″x5″ notebook trackpad. The device runs on two AA batteries, and the battery life is quite impressive. I’ve been using it as my primary device for three months now and it still has 50% life on the batteries that shipped with the unit. Compare that to recharging every-other day with my mouse.

Back to the question of RSI. After three months of use, I’ve noticed a significant decrease in pain. Notice: I’m not a doctor, and make no claims beyond personal experience. It does take a little getting used to, especially when working in apps such as Photoshop and Fireworks (click-drag in particular takes practice). I believe there are a couple changes in interaction that led to the pain reduction.

Wrist Movement

With a mouse, I’ve found I rest my wrist on either the desktop or a cushioned mouse-pad, and tend to move the mouse by twisting my wrist while leaving my forearm stationary. I know this is incorrect mousing, but when I’m not paying attention, it’s what I do. With the trackpad, I’m making use of more full-hand gestures with less motion at the wrist.

Clicking

With a mouse, almost all interaction is done with the dominate pointer finger. With the trackpad, and depending on your settings, primary clicks can be done by compressing the lower-left corner of the trackpad using any part of the hand. There is also the option of enabling touch-clicking, which allows a light tapping on any part of the trackpad from any finger to act as a click. This spreads the workload considerably. Likewise, right-click can be done by either compressing the lower-right of the device, or by a two-finger touch anywhere on the device. These changes in clicking habits has proven the most beneficial in my case.

Conclusion

I’ll admit, I do keep my trusty ol’ Logitech mouse nearby, but I’m using the trackpad 99% of the time. I still use my mouse occasionally to switch-up which motions I’m using to interact with the GUI. Also, I’m not much of a gamer, so I can’t speak to that aspect of it. For my daily use, it has definitely taken over as my primary pointer peripheral and I recommend that anyone with RSI at least give it a shot.

My only problem with the thing is its name. The irony of the label “iPhone” struck me the other day as I was watching the news with the wife and an iPhone commercial came on. More accurately, I should say I was listening to the news. I was technically reading news feeds and catching up on email. It got me thinking about how much time I spent on this device doing various activities. I’m thinking it breaks down as follows:

Reading news feeds – 70%
Email – 10%
Games – 15%
Other – 4%
Phone – 1%

That one percent may be a little high. It might be that I simply subscribe to too many feeds. All I know is that this handy little device is seriously cutting down on the amount of time I spend sitting at my desk in the evenings. That alone is a wonderful thing.

Only added mine 10 minutes ago and I’m already quite fond.

Here’s what my menu bar looked like with the transparency:

Now all you have to do is take your desktop picture and edit it in any graphics program you choose. At the very top, select 21 pixels and fill it with white.

Here’s the result:

You could also add a gradient:

Granted, that last one is a bit subtle, but you could experiment and come up with something much nicer than I did. So there you have it. The transparent menu bar in Leopard doesn’t have to be so bad. Try your own and have fun with it. For those who are curious, here’s a full shot of my desktop.

When the first spy photos of the gen 3 Nano first hit the net, there were a lot of folks bashing it. Design, small screen, whatever. It was nothing new. The same thing happens every time an Apple product gets leaked. But after it was announced, I knew I had finally found “the one”. Music, video, photos, calendar, games, etc. Perfect.

After a bit of discussion with the CFO (aka, wife o’ mine) I had my order in at Amazon. After several weeks of use, I must say, I love it. My drive to and from work is about 35 minutes. Previously I would spend the time flipping between stations, but now, I’m in podcast heaven. The screen is great, and the size is perfect. So now from the driveway to my desk and back again, I get uninterrupted entertainment and education.

So good job Apple from a long-time Mac user, first-time iPod owner.