When the iPod shuffle was announced back in January I expressed some concern about the “Spaghetti Factor“

I was expecting Apple to do something innovative with the lanyard like include the headphones in it, instead you plug headphones into the bottom (top?) and the result is a mass of spaghetti hanging from your neck. The spaghetti problem is blatantly obvious in the new TV ads where people are dancing around with them around their necks. I bet we’ll start hearing stories really soon now about how the lanyard/headphone combination gets caught car doors, etc.

An interesting product called the iDiddy appears to have addressed this oversight with a wearable and tangle-free earbud and case combination for all iPods.
The iDiddy is a quality product that starts with a gorgeous hand-sewn leather iPod case, but that’s where the similarity to other iPod cases ends. What makes the iDiddy different is that the earbuds have been embedded into their “iLanyard,” making the earbud wires otherwise invisible. The iLanyard can also be detached from the case and can be used with any audio device with an eighth-inch stereo mini jack. One nice feature is the small clips on the side of the iLanyard for attaching the earbuds when not is use. The iDiddy makes your iPod easy to hang on a hook when not in use and easy to grab when you’re on your way out the door. Read More…

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Apple today announced a new USB mouse called Mighty Mouse (US$49, free shipping). The wrinkle: rather than giving us a standard two-button mouse (that we’ve been begging them for forever,) Mighty Mouse is a sleek “no button” model like the Apple USB mouse that has two tiny sensors under the hood for left and right clicking. In addition they’ve added two side buttons that seem to be positioned in a slightly ackward location.

Meet the mouse that reinvented the wheel. The scroll wheel, that is. At $49, Mighty Mouse features the revolutionary Scroll Ball that lets you move anywhere inside a document, without lifting a finger. And with touch-sensitive technology concealed under the seamless top shell, you get the programability of a four-button mouse in a single-button design. Click, roll, squeeze and scroll. This mouse just aced the maze.

Mighty Mouse is a multi-button model with a cable. I would have prefered a Bluetooth model but suspect that the wireless version could be announced for around US$79 in the fall. I wish the Mighty Mouse was a little more like the two-button mouse with built-in trackpad mockup from Chris Hungate that we posted in May.
Will you be purchasing one?
(Thanks to everyone, and I mean everyone, that wrote to me about my earlier piece.)

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