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Arcane Brilliance: The two-button mage myth
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we dispel mage-related myths, expose wizardly untruth, and separate magical fact from fiction ... just like the Mythbusters, only with more Fireballs. You may not believe this, but lately I've been finding something more annoying than the continued existence of warlocks. I know, I know. Crazy, right? What could possibly be more annoying than our emo-loving, Hot Topic-frequenting, mascara-laden, parent-hating nemesises? Nemesi? Apparently the dictionary says "nemesis" is its own plural, which is just ... boring. Anyway, the answer to the question that I just pretended you asked is this: "Mages are a two-button class." -- The internet These days, you literally can't post the word "mage" anywhere on the web without someone, usually multiple people, posting some poorly spelled, perplexingly punctuated amalgam of the above words. It's usually intended as an indictment of the class, a dismissal of what non-mages feel is the simplistic nature of of our major DPS spell rotations. The assumption is that mages are an easy, boring class to play, that one could be a successful mage simply by drunkenly alternating pressing two buttons. For a very long time, it was easy for me to ignore this. It was stupid, and false, and perpetuated by non-mages who were either clear trolls or outright ignorant. But lately, I've been hearing self-deprecating versions of this same phrase from actual, honest-to-goodness mages. Are we really buying into the ignorant assumptions of the rest of the community? It was at that moment that I realized that it was time I addressed what I call the two-button myth.
MacMice ships The Mouse BT II
If dropping 70 bucks on Apple's one two-button Bluetooth Mighty Mouse just wasn't going to happen, then it's highly unlikely you'd spend the same amount on a third-party alternative that may never arrive. Although MacMice hasn't been in the news of late for mysteriously missing shipments, we're still not sure what to make of the company. Nevertheless, it's releasing a new version of The Mouse BT that sports a white outfit in favor of the previous silver, plays nice with OS X and Windows XP, and supports the Bluetooth v1.2 standard as well. This honest-to-goodness two-button mouse certainly resembles the Mighty Mouse, but in place of Apple's miniature trackball is MacMice's "MicroScroll" (i.e. your run-of-the-mill notchless scroll wheel). While The Mouse BT II doesn't support single-battery operation, it does include a nifty USB charging base where you can park your pet for the night to recuperate. Although the company may have a shaky past, the real issue here is the questionable pricing -- unless a charging station just rocks your world, it's unlikely MacMice will win over any potential Bluetooth Mighty Mouse customers by just matching Apple's (debatably high) $69.99.
