Unitrap vs. iCatch

For many computer enthusiasts who purchased Apple’s recent iMac or Blue and White G3, there was an instant dislike of the puck shaped mouse that comes with these machines. While aesthetically pleasing and certainly in line with Apple’s ‘Think Different’ approach, the round mouse is a bit of a challenge for most computer users.

Initial complaints about the puck mouse’s ergonomics (that the symmetrical shape of the mouse made it too easy to lose the orientation of where ‘up’ was supposed to be) have been dealt with. The more recent mice bundled with the candy-coloured iMacs have a detectable indent at the top of the mouse button, to guide finger placement and make it much easier to keep the mouse pointing up.

However, even with this design tweak, many will still find the round mouse unsatisfactory. And for those without the budget for replacement USB mouse, two enterprising companies have come to the rescue with products that transform the round Apple mouse into a more conventionally shaped one.

The first to market was Macsense^® with their iCatch. This one-piece device is simplicity itself. Snap it on the top of your round mouse and you instantly have a pointing device of a more standard length. But the drawback with the iCatch is that you also get a mouse that’s quite a bit wider than most. A bit unwieldy for my taste, and after a couple of days with the iCatch, it was unsnapped.

I was intrigued when Contour Design Inc. released their solution, the Unitrap. Assembly is simple. First, you remove the side panels (the colour bits) from the Apple mouse. The mouse then sits in the bottom shell of the Unitrap, and the top shell snaps in on top to completely enclose the device. The Unitrap button interacts nicely with the button of the enclosed mouse, and the package comes complete with buttons in all five iMac colours, so you can coordinate! Once the whole thing’s assembled, it ends up feeling like a regular mouse, rather than something added onto another mouse. Again, in this case, the transformation does add some bulk — this time to the height. The resulting Unitrap mouse ends up being about 3/8″ taller than the old beige Apple mouse, something that bothered me nearly as much as the extra width the iCatch added. And just as with the iCatch, I ended up going back to the regular round mouse after a couple of days.

If I were to recommend one over the other, the uniTrap definitely has it over the iCatch. It looks better, and feels more like a regular mouse. But both of these solutions are for the budget minded. For a true mouse-shape improvement, there are several USB mice available that are compatible with the iMac or blue and white G3.