Is there an Apple Mighty Mouse alternative?

Question

I'll start by admitting that I realize the Apple Mighty Mouse is beyond deprecated. I'm a musician and programmer, and I work on both Mac and PC. I continue to buy a "new to me" discontinued, re-conditioned, re-certified, pre-owned Apple Mighty Mouse every year or two for this reason: the scroll wheel performs in two axes.

In case you haven't had the delight of a massive spreadsheet (Excel), or a musical score (Cubase), the Mighty Mouse is the only mouse I've found that lets you scroll both horizontally AND vertically without a key combo. It's magic. (I know, I could get a Magic mouse - but I refuse to use a wireless mouse - they chew up batteries and the tracking on any wireless mouse has always been terrible compared to a wired mouse, in my experience).

Sadly, the design of the tiny scroller ball is such that it gets gummed up with "hand cheese" after a year or so and is so small that repair is impossible without breaking.

It's USB2 and I have a KVM switch. The Mighty Mouse (wired) continues to be the only mouse I can find with only the buttons I need, none of the buttons I don't need and don't want and an X-Y scroll "ball", and it performs flawlessly on both Mac and PC through a KVM switch. The one flaw is the inferior size, shape and durability of the scroll ball sensors. Such a shame.

If there are alternatives out there, I sure haven't found any.

Do you know of any other mouse that has an X-Y scrollwheel capability?

I have programmer friends that can chat at length about how awesome their 100db mechanical keyboards are. Yet none of them can tell me about an equally amazing mouse. It's oddly absent from the internet.

I'd be very interested in your recommendation for a decent replacement mouse, USB2, wired, and why. I am not interested in any gaming mice! No extra buttons. I've found nothing for a professional graphic artist or musician who is looking for quality and durability.

Answer 1

There's many options, but a few that I would recommend over the others.

If you don't mind some DIY and have a nice wired mouse laying around, then this is the best option. This github is not too hard to install (my opinion, it might depend) and provides quite a lot of backwards compatibility. As long as you have 32-bit or 64-bit Office and Windows 2000/Excel 2000 or later, this option will work reliably.

Another option is to get a mouse with a trackball. They are, in my experience, pretty comfortable once you get used to them. Also, there's a pretty wide spectrum. My friend uses a MX Ergo (link here) and has never complained. The battery lasts quite a while and the bluetooth "Unifying" receiver works really well.

Finally, if you don't mind any mouse as long as it has horizontal scrolling, just try a couple of the following. They all have horizontal scrolling, but I can't vouch for the reliability: 1, 2, 3, and 4 all should work but I don't know for sure. It's probably best to do a bit of research if you don't like any of the options.