Griffin PowerMate
Posted on January 30, 2006
Filed Under /dev/null/ | 61 views |
Originally I bought the Griffin PowerMate because of its form factor: it feels good, looks good, and has a blue LED. I’m a sucker for blinken lights. I like well-made hardware, especially Mac hardware, and it is certainly that. But I didn’t think it would be especially useful to me on a day-to-day basis, particularly given that I don’t do audio or video recording or editing.
Today I mapped it to work with TextEdit with with Rotate Right mapped to Scroll Down and Rotate Left mapped to Scroll Up. No big deal there. But in one stroke of particular brilliance, if I may say so myself, I’ve also mapped the Click action to Command-S. Clicking the PowerMate saves the document.
This has proven to be so handy that in a mere two hours it’s become almost automatic: write a good chunk of text, click the PowerMate. Write some more, click again. Get up from the computer, click the PowerMate first. It’s oddly satisfying.
It doesn’t hurt that the PowerMate is also set up to constantly pulse the blue LED. That amuses me to no end.
Update: I’ve now also mapped Long Click to Cmd-N, which lets me create new TextEdit documents by smacking the PowerMate. By making Cmd-S the short click and Cmd-N the long, where clicking too short is the most likely error I will make while clicking, I’ve ensured that the worst thing I do when making a mistake is save the current document.
Despite the obvious brilliance of this configuration I can already hear some of you asking “But you already have Cmd-S and Cmd-N for these functions, what more do you need? Surely this is just silly justificationizing for the purchase of your PowerMate.” To you I say otherwise, based on this (admittedly ad hoc) theory of behavioural development: it takes less effort, energy and mental stimulus to press down upon the single large point (the PowerMate) than it does to co-ordinate and press numerous small points (the keys). Using the PowerMate thusly must, by definition, be more efficient
My proof? Small children. It is precisely for this reason that small children learn to bash and bang on pots and pans well before they ever learn to play the piano.
It is quite simply an optimization.
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I just felt the need to say something about ‘boys and their toys.’ Somewhat apropos.
Those things are damn cool, though. You have to out what Robert Hodgin has done with ‘em over at http://www.flight404.com. That’s some wild LED coolness.
That’s some amazing design, and not cheap either (assuming he paid for his… I wonder if Griffin would give me a few dozen if I made them into art…?)
hell - add a multi-button mouse and map in copy/paste functionality. Oh the efficiency!
Find me a mullti-button mouse that has the same aesthetic appeal as the PowerMate and I might consider it….