It’s like a magic wand for your Mac

I’ve always wanted to wave around a wand and make things appear out of thin air, but life dealt me the Muggle card. So instead of magic, I have to rely on technology to make things happen. The Air Mouse Elite lets me control my computer from a few feet away—and after years of desktop-only mousing, that does feel a little bit magical.

The Air Mouse Elite connects to your Mac via a wireless USB dongle and charges via a separate USB connection on its own docking station. To get your Mac to recognize it, you have to perform a bit of wizardry by first installing the MotionTools software and then simultaneously pressing a button on the dongle and the device. After the dongle and mouse are paired, launch the software and configure each of the mouse’s four hot keys (with one always reserved for gestures) to close a window, launch an application, bring up the onscreen pointer—and many other possibilities.

Wave your mouse in the air...yes, like you just don’t care.

The 2.4GHz Air Mouse Elite uses motion sensors to track the angle and speed of your movements. By holding the mouse vertically and waving it around, you control actions onscreen. Moving the cursor feels like shoving a puck in a game of shuffleboard—it’s not exactly the most intuitive, fluid way of moving around the screen, but the feel improves once you get used to the mechanics.

The MotionTools software configures the Air Mouse’s actions and gesture buttons. Unfortunately, it’s a bit confusing at first. To designate an action, drag it from the Actions list on the right side of the screen to the corresponding media button on the left—the Gestures screen is the same. Once you finally figure out the software, you can program 50 different actions and gestures, and configure different user profiles.

The Air Mouse is ergonomically shaped to fit the curve of your hand, and it glides smoothly across your desktop. After a while of getting used to the mechanics, we were able to seamlessly move the pointer around on our Mac—almost as if we were waving a magic wand—and using the device in the air works fine for tasks like slideshows and showing off presentations. But for day-to-day work, we were more comfortable with traditional desktop mousery.

The bottom line. The Air Mouse Elite’s gestures work fine for certain tasks like presentations and volume tweaks, but we still keep a traditional mouse on hand.