Using a mouse with an iPad used to be a lot more difficult than simply pairing it using Bluetooth. Before iPad OS supported any Bluetooth pointing devices (iOS 13 as some accessibility feature, and later system-wide), it was either limited to wired USB mice (on an iPad Pro), or a few select “Made for iOS” (“MFI”) devices. If you look at some iOS remote desktop clients, you will still find references to the Swiftpoint GT mouse, for example in the documentation for Microsoft’s RD Client on iOS.
I have a Swiftpoint GT mouse, and to put it succinctly, it’s a weird little thing. I can’t say this is a typical review, as this is no longer for sale (more on that later).
As a mouse, it’s almost uncomfortably too small, and yet big enough that, unlike a flat trackpad you can stack in an iPad’s case or on top of a laptop, is cumbersome enough to be a hassle. It is supposed to counterbalance that by being slightly magnetic, and several magnetized surfaces are offered to be glued on your laptop. Yuck. The magnet is strong enough to hold on the outside of Apple’s iPad case, and yet if anything were to slightly come in contact with the mouse it would just fall off; The provided magnets may fare better, but I don’t want to take that risk..
One of the mouse’s selling features is the “stylus”. If you incline the mouse to its right side, it will press down on a stylus, which activates a “mode” to perform shortcuts using gestures. Maybe it’s the way I use computer mice, but I end up accidentally triggering that stylus mode far too often, so I just disabled it.
Speaking of which, the mouse can be configured with the power switch set in the middle of on and off. Initially, this would launch a web browser and go to a web site by simulating a keyboard, but that website is now long gone. Their web site still offers an “offline” site as an archive that you can download.
The mouse has now been rebranded as the “Propoint”, with the same terrible ergonomics. It is also just far too expensive for a Bluetooth mouse.
Published on May 8, 2022 at 19:05 EDT
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