I won't discuss the pros or cons of Apple's Mighty Mouse here, as mine just broke. Or more to the point, I broke it -- the sticking little ball just drove me round the bend. Anyhow, I ended buying myself a simple, cheap and quite nice USB optical mouse. Nothing fancy. Two main buttons plus a scroll/button wheel (ie: a scroll wheel that you can also click). So far so good. Until I re-installed my System.
Once in I started setting the system up like I wanted it, to my horror, the Mouse preferences didn't show me the third button on my mouse! Now what? Well it turns out that the System treats the Mighty Mouse special. That is, it recognizes it as such and brings up the corresponding preferences. Great, what about the rest of us?
I scoured the net for several days trying to find out if someone had worked it out. I did find one solution. Just plug in a Mighty Mouse, set the preferences, plug it out, use you other mouse -- the preferences will 'stick.' Fine, what if you don't happen to have a Mighty Mouse just lying aroud?
Most people replace their mouse with fancy Logitech, Microsoft or MacAlly mice that bundle their own drivers that allow all kind of wonders to be done. But what about us simple folk that want a no-frills but functional mouse (not to mention five times cheaper)?
Caution: Terminal and root access required.
What you need to do is replace the USB ID of your mouse with the ones that correspond to the Mighty Mouse. Find your mouse's IDs (VendorID and ProductID) in System Profiler, under the USB section. There they will show up in hexadecimal form, ie: 0x0021. You can use the Calculator in Programmer view mode (View » Programmer) to convert these values to decimal form. For example, 0x0021 is 33).
Make a backup of /System » Library » Extensions » AppleHIDMouse.kext just in case. Next you need to edit this file. I used:
<key>idProduct</key>
<integer>772</integer>
<key>idVendor</key>
<integer>1452</integer>
Change the 722 and 1452 to the respective numbers for your mouse, then save the file. (If you're using nano, you save by pressing Control-X and Return.)
sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleHIDMouse.kext
Plug your mouse back in, and you should be good to go -- when you go into the Mouse tab of the Keyboard & Mouse System Preferences panel, you will see the Mighty Mouse setup. Set up as you like; I use the scroll button with the Application Switcher.
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090602194556219