I have to report here, one of my biggest trepidations about buying a new Mac Mini was whether my beloved Griffin Powermate would still work. What’s a Powermate?
From Wikipedia:
" The Griffin PowerMate is an input device produced by Griffin Technology. First released in 2001, it is a multifunction knob, which can be rotated, pressed, and rotated while pressed. It is a type of paddle controller.These actions can be programmed to invoke specific responses from a range of computer applications, such as changing the volume, or skipping through videos.
The PowerMate is also equipped with a blue on the underside, which can be programmed to flash, pulse, or remain illuminated at various intensities in response to input from the attached computer
The original PowerMate required a USB port, but a wireless Bluetooth version was introduced in 2014. The product was discontinued in 2018"
I have used this since 2002 - as a die hard itunes/Music user it has performed pause/play skip ahead and skip back service for me (regardless of frontmost App) through an iMac g5, Intel iMac, Mac mini 2018 intel Sequoia (for sale), and -with rosetta - A Mac Mini pro and Sequoia today.
It’s USB-a and I still use a usb mac keyboard so it’s always plugged into the ports in that.
Anyhow- it may disappear once Rosetta gets deprecated with MacOS one day so I’ll appreciate it today.
I wonder what the device looks like at a low level. If you have any USB diagnostic tools (e.g. a Linux PC with the lsusb command), you could find out how the device presents itself.
If you’re lucky, it will present itself as a generic HID class device (maybe a game controller of some kind). In which case, it may be usable even without proprietary software - just another input device that apps may be able to detect and use.
It still know’s it’s a Powermate. The trick is is the software, not the device, that points the controls as per application - but I don’t use it that way - I just use default settings to control Music (you can create sets of commands for various things) - and while PC keyboards often have controller fKeys -old Mac keyboards don’t (aside from volume/mute/eject).
Anyhow, I’m digging it.
±o Hub in Apple Extended USB Keyboard@01130000 <class IOUSBHostDevice, id 0x100000ad9, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (262 ms), retain 32>
| ±o Apple Extended USB Keyboard@01133000 <class IOUSBHostDevice, id 0x100000b1b, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (157 ms), retain 33>
| ±o Griffin PowerMate@01132000 <class IOUSBHostDevice, id 0x100549f48, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (46 ms), retain 34>