Kensington TrackballWorks for Mac

User Reviews

• Less features and doesn't work!

  jmac1085December 15, 2012

  Pros

  It does half of what MouseWorks did...but that's not a pro, now, is it?

  Cons

  First off, it doesn't work in Mountain Lion unless you go to System Prefs and open Trackball Works. There's no app dependent programming anymore, fewer scroll features, and the worst part for me is the lack of multiple keystroke combinations. I used to be able to program my expert mouse to hit three keystrokes in a row on one button. Now, I can only chose one keystroke and a modifier (shift, control, etc.). I saw this coming when they created the non customizable slimblade. I bought it thinking it was an updated version of the expert mouse, but was horrified to see that Kensington took away the one thing that really separated their products from the rest. Idiots.

  Summary

  I'm looking for other trackball options, and so should you. Kensington has gone downhill, and are ignoring the client base that make them successful.

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• Build a great product - THEN BETRAY FOLKS WHO LOVE IT?

  JigShaunJune 19, 2012

  Pros

  There are no pros, BECAUSE THE SOFTWARE DOESN'T WORK! Just because something is old does not mean that it should be thrown out! That is the whole problem with our CONSUMER society today. But I digress. I own a Kensington Turbo Mouse Pro Wireless. I spent a lot of money to buy it. Yes, I bought it a long time ago. Does that mean the cash is now meaningless? I LOVE my Turbo Mouse Pro. Up until now it (and the Kensington software driver that allowed me to use it effectively) was the most used piece of gear in my whole studio. Every one of my audio engineers has one, set up to use with Digidesign Pro Tools. One button for each of the main TOOLS, and the chorded buttons for a couple of other things. Without the Turbo Mouse I feel like somebody has CUT OFF MY ARM. Suddenly we can't use any of the buttons, or the scroll wheel. The loss of this driver is actually COSTING us because we are less productive! Oh, wait, this is the box for pros. THERE AREN'T ANY ANYMORE!

  Cons

  I understand that in this waste driven society, nothing is supposed to last more than a couple of years. After all, we replace our whole COMPUTER every two to three years. How can we possibly expect a trackball to remain useful after this long? Well, DAMN IT! I paid for this thing, and I expect it to work until it doesn't work anymore. I expect it to do what it was promised to do. Until it breaks and I have to throw it out. Well, all the buttons and wheels are mechanically fine. The only reason it doesn't work is because Kensington wants me to go out and buy a new one. In fact, I suspect they wanted me to go out and buy a new one a LONG time ago. Well, here's news for you Kensington. My next trackball is going to be a Logitech. Not because they are any different than you. Not even because I'm angry. Just because I've tried the Expert Mouse (not a mouse at all) and Orbit trackballs and I don't like the feel. Plus, because I'm frankly angry that I can't use my trackball!

  Summary

  Let's be honest here. The reason that Kensington has not spent the...what...the WEEK it would take to port the 10.6 software to 10.7 is simple. If they released a driver for my Turbo Mouse Pro for Mac OSX 10.7, then I wouldn't have to go over to Futureshop this weekend and buy half a dozen of the Expert Mouse to replace them. I could keep on using me Turbo Mouse Pro and use that money for something THAT I ALREADY HAVEN'T PAID FOR ONCE! It's as simple as that. And the more I think about it, the easier it seems. After all, the Expert Mouse is the same as the Turbo Mouse in almost every way. The scroll wheel is different, and I HATE the feel of the ball. It's too fast and too smooth. There isn't enough resistance for me. But structurally, the two are virtually identical. Now I know, they are probably pretty different under the hood. But come on...HOW HARD COULD IT BE? We're talking about being able to customize four buttons and a wheel. Maybe control the speed of the ball? Perhaps choose which way the scroll wheel turns. And the whole thing already exists for an Intel machine. All they have to do is teach it to speak Lion. I just really can't believe it would be THAT hard. So it comes down to this. MONEY. And if Kensington has so little respect for me and my credit card...well, I suppose they won't even notice. But it's the principle here. I know they can't support this thing forever. That is unrealistic, I know. But there are thousands of them out there, and I bet most of them still work. Mine has been around the world, it's been dropped a couple of dozen times, left in a freezing car more times than I can count. It's even been under water once! And it keeps on humming. You would think that Kensington would be PROUD of building something that durable. Not regretful. I guess we're going to have to get accustomed to the Logitech Trackball. My one suggestion is this. Do like I'm doing. Make your dissatisfaction heard. It's not likely to make any difference, but it might make you feel better about the $80 dollars you're going to have to spend to replace a piece of gear that has absolutely nothing wrong with it!

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• You don't win customers by TAKING AWAY features!

  sonorelliDecember 20, 2011

  Pros

  64-bit support

  Cons

  Missing features, which are ALL present in MouseWorks with an Expert Mouse Pro Trackball Scroll wheel can't be assigned to horizontal No Application Sets - do they not realize how important this is??? Acceleration - MouseWorks has THREE controls, overall gain, and separate control for slow and fast movement. Very intuitive. TrackBallWorks??? I tried for weeks to figure out the Acceleration and it was always wrong, either too fast or too slow.

  Summary

  I seriously hope someone from Kensington reads this. If you think you can get away with what Intuit did to Quicken, you're sadly mistaken. It was a BLESSING for me that my Expert Mouse TRACKBALL stopped working (I spilled tea in it). I got out the trusty old Expert Mouse Pro TRACKBALL, reinstalled MouseWorks, and lowered my blood pressure. BTW, why do you insist on calling a TRACKBALL a mouse? Do you think people are afraid of trackballs? I HATE mice, I can't use them. Logitech products are unusable, the balls are too small. If you add back ALL the features you took away from MouseWorks, I might consider buying one of your new products, otherwise, I treasure the old ones.

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• loss of 'per application' settings is a deal breaker!

  jeremybechtoldNovember 24, 2010

  Pros

  the ability to slow the cursor on command would be nice, and the axis restriction might be as well... both via modifier keys.

  Cons

  removal of 'per app' settings removes years of customization for most power-users. icon teases with what might be advanced rotational control, but nothing of the sort exists here.

  Summary

  this "upgrade" to new software boasts native functionality in the 64-bit system prefs of 10.6 and above... but that's the only thing worthy of praise in my experience. I read about this new software a few months back, but mouseworks (MW), the previous software worked just fine. the lure for me to trackballworks (TBW) was the thought that perhaps the icon showed a glimpse of a new feature that would really be helpful in the world of kensington input device customization... the icon shows the teaser path going around the trackballl as if it might allow functionality based on the rotation of the ball like a planet on its axis, instead of lat/long movements combined to make x/y 2D movements on screen. no such luck. poor decision to use that kind of artwork on supposedly "advanced" trackball software. with that out of the way, I went to check my app settings... GONE. so not only does this software not do anything related to the hinted feature in the artwork, it actually removes years of customizations from the MW installation you already have. At that moment, I made my mind up to revert to MW ASAP. a few features that could be useful are the ability to restrict your pointer movements to vert/horz axis lines without deviation, but I would guess that if that was an issue in your day-to-day work, you might already use a tablet for those precise drawing movements, or perhaps use another input device in those situations. I still have no clue what the default origin feature did, I saw nothing happen when I enabled it, and didn't investigate long enough to find out. lastly, the "slow pointer" modifier feature could be a good one for pixel-precise movements on occasion, but the usefulness compared to per app settings is next to none for someone who has been using this software for years. finally, be ware, instead of following their normal convention of putting the uninstaller with the installer on the dmg from the website, they hide it in your applications > utilities folder upon installation. were it not for the tech support fellow that preferred I use spotlight to find the folder rather than just tell me to open the utilities folder inside my apps folder, I never would have found it (after 5 minutes of trying to determine what he wanted me to use spotlight to find)... TBW is a big ball of fail from kensington. it gets one star since it cannot get none, and the potential for the axis and slow features to be used with the features in the previous app might warrant a look in the next version. until then. thank god for 5 year old software!

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• First, make a backup, problems lurk...

  pendragonAugust 29, 2010

  Pros

  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />I have a 2 button Orbit Trackball that has worked without fault on a 24â?? C2D iMac, 10.6.4. I was running MouseWorks, 3.0R1. Then I installed TrackballWorks. It short, it was a disaster: The left button was greyed out and therefore not programmable, the right button lacked the option to Scroll, and tacking speeds were not settable. Fortunately, I had a full backup and was able to restore. But if you do not have a BU, the Uninstaller is located in the Utilities folder. I donâ??t believe Kensington should put things there, but there it was. This is, by far, the worst app I have seen from Kensington. An Apple Trackpad can't be far off...

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• Updated interface, Now with Fewer Features!

  devbowmanJuly 12, 2010

  Pros

  Really cant think of any

  Cons

  ? Omission of the highly useful Application Sets makes this 'update' worthless for professional users ? Limit axis movement key modifiers are useless as most apps where youd need that precision already do that (ie Photoshop)

  Summary

  As a power user of the venerable Expert Mouse, I use it to speed up my workflow across many apps, and at times when they are running concurrently (ProTools, FinalCutPro, Color and Photoshop for example) and have shortcuts programmed for each application on each button/chord - and the removal of the application sets is absolutely baffling to me - why would Acco/Kensington remove such a useful feature? To actually take the time to REMOVE CODE that provides additional functionality??!? I double and triple checked to make sure I wasnt losing my mind, just in case it was hidden somewhere or was only invoked when you had multiple apps running, but no dice. So if anyone finds a way to make this happen in the new software, Id appreciate the enlightenment - but for now... its time to rollback to MouseWorks.

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• Disappointing

  Full ScoreJune 6, 2010

  Pros

  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />Yet again Kensington manages to produce software for its mice which is basic and functional at best. Same old story: excellent hardware - lousy software.

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• A good start

  orygunzJune 6, 2010

  Pros

  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />Finally. mouse software for my Expert Mouse. Obviously not as full featured as the old MouseWorks which I was still using on my Intel Mac but now this is really responsive software as I'm sure it includes native code. The two features I really miss from MouseWorks are the menu selection which invoked a pop up menu to select any of the instant shortcuts available and the type text feature. The good news is there is a snap to default option which moves your pointer automatically to a OK button and the keyboard shortcut option which when used with Quickeys, allows me to do anything and more than I ever was able to do previously. To substitute for the show pop up menu that is missing in this version I use a Quickeys Softkey shortcut which invokes it's own pop up menu and then allows infinite options. I remember a few years ago Kensington was on the ball and was constantly updating their Mouseworks software. It would be nice if they even showed half of that commitment now to their Mac users.

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