To compare with another driver that creatives use a lot: the Wacom driver takes up about one third more memory space. Many menu apps behave in terrible ways, but not this one. The visible portion of the driver is the menu app. Note that we're working with a public beta here, but I saw no memory leaks, and a nice low CPU usage. So I put it through its paces and then launched Activity Monitor to watch its memory usage and CPU cycles. The first thing I did was see if the driver would bog down my system. But without a good driver, the best device becomes just more waste made of plastic and metal. In addition, I also found I had more control over skimming and scrolling with the ShuttlePRO's jog than with a the trackpad or mouse. And your wrist and hand are comfortably supported by the shape of the ShuttlePRO. The movements that you make are mostly finger movements.
From an ergonomic point of view, I don't think you can compare the keyboard/mouse way of working with the ShuttlePRO v2 way. True, you could learn the shortcuts, but that would still not prevent you from having to move your hand/wrist frequently. The ShuttlePRO v2 makes all these manipulations possible without lifting your hand. With the Magic Trackpad or a mouse, you need to move your hand for almost every action or learn the shortcuts. I used Final Cut Pro X and after trying out the default Final Cut Pro X set of actions, I can safely say that working with the ShuttlePRO v2 is much, much easier and much, much faster. Let's first focus on the user experience. It would - in my opinion - just sit in your way with the 60+ possible assignments of the Shuttle. Such an on-screen representation makes sense for the few buttons and the ring of the Intuos 5. And no, I wouldn't prefer to see all those buttons on-screen as with Wacom's Intuos 5 driver.
Others may find them essential.Īgain personally, I prefer working with the driver's capability to create a printable PDF of all button/jog/shuttle zone assignments for each application set. Personally, I find the labels a nice touch. The labels are pre-cut and there's a set of commonly used pre-printed labels, as well as a bunch of blank ones. The two top rows have a transparent plastic cap that you can remove with a set of tweezers and for which you get a generous page of labels (non-sticky) in the box. All of these are customisable through the driver.įurthermore, the ShuttlePRO v2 has 15 customisable buttons. These points work unidirectional: for example, if you assign an action to the transition from zone 5 to 6, you can still assign a different action to the transition from 6 to 5. It's a spring-based shuttle ring, and because of that I thought it would be very limited in usage, but the ring has 15 zones in all, with transition points in-between each zone. The shuttle (whence the name comes from, I assume) itself is a robust ring enclosing the jog. There are three of these only for ergonomic reasons. The big turning knob in the middle - the jog - has three recessed 'pits' to place your finger. In fact, it's so flat you hardly notice it sits under your wrist/hand. From the images on the web, you might think the ShuttlePRO v2 still has a border the height of a centimetre or so, but that's an optical illusion. The design of the ShuttlePRO v2 is such that it helps to keep your wrist and shoulder healthy. It's really a specialised tool to enhance the user experience in specific applications.Īnd enhancing it does. That extra step is why the ShuttlePRO v2 isn't just another mouse. It is not intended to be, although you could use it to scroll through Finder windows, provided you first place the mouse in the window that is in focus. The ShuttlePRO v2 is not a mouse replacement. I was prepared for a device that I could use in NLEs and a few photo editors only, but I found that one of the reasons why the ShuttlePRO v2 (and ShuttleXpress too, for that matter) is such an interesting device is its impressive application support. With the introduction of the new driver (v3), I finally got the opportunity to review the ShuttlePRO v2. Over the years, Contour Design released a ShuttleXpress and the ShuttlePRO v2. I have always been fascinated by their ergonomic shuttle device, the ShuttlePRO. I know Contour Design for as long as I write about Mac products, which is well over two decades.