Mighty mouse, today you are so…not mighty

Stuck mighty mouse

I’ve been loving Apple’s wireless keyboard and mouse that came with my 24″ iMac. Lean back in my chair, scrounge around the room, pick one up, put it down — never lost a connection. And they even work great to wake the iMac up from a snooze, which I had thought would be the Achilles heel of these bluetooth-powered guys. Nope.

Unfortunately, it turns out the so-called Mighty Mouse has a different design flaw. Starting the other day, the little track ball on top of the mouse stopped working for scrolling up and down, although it still worked side to side. I tried replacing the batteries – no luck. I tried sort of scrubbing it with a paper towel. No luck. I tried to open the mouse and clean it — no luck. You can’t actually open this mouse to clean the mouse ball.

Well, Mac OSX Hints to the rescue. Turns out you have to slightly depress the ball, creating a little space and then blow it clean with compressed air. Yowza. Apple has its own set of tips, including a little how-to movie.


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One response to “Mighty mouse, today you are so…not mighty”

  1. Scott Avatar
    Scott

    There is a video on Youtube which details how to dismantle your MM to clean out the track ball. Mine stopped scrolling down and the compressed air trick did not work. After watching the video I was able to clean quite a bit of lint and dust from the ball housing and now my MM works like new.

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