5 ms·

It still means the thing is unusable when charging, no matter how long a charge lasts. In the grand scheme of things, no, it isn't that big of a deal. But it s

by untog 7y ago

It still means the thing is unusable when charging, no matter how long a charge lasts. In the grand scheme of things, no, it isn't that big of a deal. But it showcased a stereotype people associate with Apple: aesthetics over function. The plug could have gone in the top of the mouse, so you could use it just like you would a wired mouse while it charged. But no, the plug must be invisible, damn the inconvenience.

garmaine 7y ago
Actually it's worse--it's explicitly inconvenient to the point of being impossible to use in a wired fashion. The inconvenience of the user is a designed-in feature. They purposefully screwed over the user for aesthetic reasons. That's messed up.
- crehn 7y ago
  Don’t use it wired; it lasts a very long time. A port on the side would break its continuous curve, the sharp contrast of a dark port would be visually jarring (especially since the mouse is small and the overall tone is bright and smooth; it’s relative), and invite unnecessary long-term imperfections (e.g. deformities to the sharp aluminum cut, dust, etc.). I’m very thankful Apple doesn’t always listen to what “people” want. True creativity (especially in a pervasive aesthetic sense) is rare and most can’t envision new concepts or feelings before experiencing them.
  - untog 7y ago
    > A port on the side would be break its continuous curve, the sharp contrast of a dark port would be visually jarring This is literally the stuff people make jokes about when they talk about Apple.
    - crehn 7y ago
      Yes, it sounds silly to most. Most people would also say an asymmetric phone notch and chin doesn’t bother them. That’s why pushing pragmatic and perfectionist design (it’s a delicate balance, and Apple isn’t perfect) is difficult. But on a deeper level, most people feel good design and experiences without ever noticing them. It’s much more pervasive than you think.
      - solarkraft 7y ago
        I dislike Apple for many of their user hostile decisions, but for this I love them. I'm bothered by phone bezels not being consistent, for one example, and Apple are the only ones who seem to care about it as well.
- nseggs 7y ago
  Please. "Purposefully screwed over" is pretty dramatic and almost certainly not true. The mouse is sold as wireless. That seems to me a more likely reason it's impossible to use in a wired fashion. It also eliminates the need for a me to keep a giant pack of AA batteries at both my office and home office. It does require power occasionally, but then very briefly and almost never. The OS will also remind you almost comically early that the battery is getting low, and then you just plug it in when you go for lunch or a coffee run. When you get back you're good for another month or something like that.
  - garmaine 7y ago
    My time has value. It has particularly high value when I'm in the middle of working on something. Interruptions in this state have especially high opportunity cost. We could live in a universe where, when the "battery low" notification pops up I take a few seconds to plug in my mouse and go back to whatever I was working on. Instead, Apple purposefully chose to make me unable to use my mouse for a significant duration of time, at a moment that is NOT of my choosing. On a laptop this is fine as I have the trackpad. On a desktop workstation (where my time is more valuable!) this means getting up and taking a walk, or getting a cup of coffee at the very least. Those are good activities to do, but only when they fit into my routine. As a sudden abrupt interruption, it is actually a cost. And at my hourly rates, a particularly high one greater than the amount I paid for the mouse in the first place. So yeah, I do consider that "purposefully screwing over" the user. They could have made another perfectly reasonable design choice that would have had greater functionality, but opted not to for purely ephemeral reasons of branding and image.
dbt00 7y ago
Seriously I never ever ever found this to be a problem when I was using one. It charges from zero to usable in as long as it takes to type “ha ha this mouse charging port is on the bottom” on the internet, and a full charge lasts a long time. The bad keyboards and no hardware escape key are real problems. Magsafe was a real loss (although of course they lost MagSafe to standardize on a third party standard with usb-c).
- sneak 7y ago
  The rumor is that USB-C was an Apple invention, quietly pushed into the USB-IF so that it wouldn't have the Apple stink on it, and so that it would become a global hardware standard in the way an "Apple Thing" never could: power and high speed data, in a convenient and reversible plug. Now they're on Chromebooks, WinTel machines, and the Raspberry Pi. If the rumor is true, it was a really smooth move by Apple. It would be an extremely Apple-esque thing to hack an industry-wide movement just so that your laptop could be charged by any power brick made by any manufacturer at any time (even if your competitors get this functionality too).
  - izacus 7y ago
    "The rumor" sounds like rather common history rewriting to from Apple fans. Do you have any sources for that rumor?
    - dannyw 7y ago
      The convergence of USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 (an Apple standard) isn’t an accident, but I doubt Apple covertly pushed it behind the scenes.
    - sneak 7y ago
      John Gruber made the claim. https://www.macrumors.com/2015/03/13/apple-invents-usb-c/ https://www.macrumors.com/2015/03/13/apple-invents-usb-c/ https://www.cultofmac.com/315989/is-this-proof-that-apple-invented-usb-c/ https://www.cultofmac.com/315989/is-this-proof-that-apple-in... https://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/03/14/apple-usbc https://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/03/14/apple-usbc
lyxsus1 7y ago
> It still means the thing is unusable when charging, no matter how long a charge lasts. That was the whole purpose of putting it in a bottom. The thing works several months on a single charge and it takes just a couple of hours to recharge. And it starts giving notification at least a day before battery's depleted. It's not aesthetics over function mantra, but realisation that they can't be decoupled or developed by separate divisions. That's what concerns me about Ive leaving. He and Jobs evidently had enough courage to ignore public opinion to make things the right way and in most cases it turned to be excellent decisions. With no successor I'm seriously afraid they'll eventually resort to safe decisions and become another Samsung/MS/Android/whatever..
- kkarakk 7y ago
  What happens when the battery conks out? throw away the mouse and buy a new one is what apple wants you to do but most people would prefer the safety net of being able to run wired in case the mouse battery started acting up. Remember this was a wireless mouse at a time when wireless was definitely not the preferred choice
  - lyxsus1 7y ago
    > What happens when the battery conks out? throw away the mouse and buy a new one That's the easiest thing to do, yes. But you can bring it to apple care, they do battery replacement for smth like $35 I guess. And if it's factory problem they just replace it, afaik. > Remember this was a wireless mouse at a time when wireless was definitely not the preferred choice At the time it had regular batteries you could replace by yourself and we were talking about latest versions. But anyway, I don't see how it can be relevant.
  - wastedhours 7y ago
    I think a lot of people forget the original wireless Magic Mouse was battery powered. I still have mine, and a couple of AAs (I think) will see it running for a good 'ol while. Nothing made me contemplate upgrading, and it's still a darn good experience.
- izacus 7y ago

by untog 7y ago

garmaine 7y ago

Actually it's worse--it's explicitly inconvenient to the point of being impossible to use in a wired fashion. The inconvenience of the user is a designed-in feature. They purposefully screwed over the user for aesthetic reasons. That's messed up.

crehn 7y ago
Don’t use it wired; it lasts a very long time. A port on the side would break its continuous curve, the sharp contrast of a dark port would be visually jarring (especially since the mouse is small and the overall tone is bright and smooth; it’s relative), and invite unnecessary long-term imperfections (e.g. deformities to the sharp aluminum cut, dust, etc.). I’m very thankful Apple doesn’t always listen to what “people” want. True creativity (especially in a pervasive aesthetic sense) is rare and most can’t envision new concepts or feelings before experiencing them.
- untog 7y ago
  > A port on the side would be break its continuous curve, the sharp contrast of a dark port would be visually jarring This is literally the stuff people make jokes about when they talk about Apple.
  - crehn 7y ago
    Yes, it sounds silly to most. Most people would also say an asymmetric phone notch and chin doesn’t bother them. That’s why pushing pragmatic and perfectionist design (it’s a delicate balance, and Apple isn’t perfect) is difficult. But on a deeper level, most people feel good design and experiences without ever noticing them. It’s much more pervasive than you think.
    - solarkraft 7y ago
      I dislike Apple for many of their user hostile decisions, but for this I love them. I'm bothered by phone bezels not being consistent, for one example, and Apple are the only ones who seem to care about it as well.
nseggs 7y ago
Please. "Purposefully screwed over" is pretty dramatic and almost certainly not true. The mouse is sold as wireless. That seems to me a more likely reason it's impossible to use in a wired fashion. It also eliminates the need for a me to keep a giant pack of AA batteries at both my office and home office. It does require power occasionally, but then very briefly and almost never. The OS will also remind you almost comically early that the battery is getting low, and then you just plug it in when you go for lunch or a coffee run. When you get back you're good for another month or something like that.
- garmaine 7y ago
  My time has value. It has particularly high value when I'm in the middle of working on something. Interruptions in this state have especially high opportunity cost. We could live in a universe where, when the "battery low" notification pops up I take a few seconds to plug in my mouse and go back to whatever I was working on. Instead, Apple purposefully chose to make me unable to use my mouse for a significant duration of time, at a moment that is NOT of my choosing. On a laptop this is fine as I have the trackpad. On a desktop workstation (where my time is more valuable!) this means getting up and taking a walk, or getting a cup of coffee at the very least. Those are good activities to do, but only when they fit into my routine. As a sudden abrupt interruption, it is actually a cost. And at my hourly rates, a particularly high one greater than the amount I paid for the mouse in the first place. So yeah, I do consider that "purposefully screwing over" the user. They could have made another perfectly reasonable design choice that would have had greater functionality, but opted not to for purely ephemeral reasons of branding and image.

dbt00 7y ago

Seriously I never ever ever found this to be a problem when I was using one. It charges from zero to usable in as long as it takes to type “ha ha this mouse charging port is on the bottom” on the internet, and a full charge lasts a long time. The bad keyboards and no hardware escape key are real problems. Magsafe was a real loss (although of course they lost MagSafe to standardize on a third party standard with usb-c).

sneak 7y ago
The rumor is that USB-C was an Apple invention, quietly pushed into the USB-IF so that it wouldn't have the Apple stink on it, and so that it would become a global hardware standard in the way an "Apple Thing" never could: power and high speed data, in a convenient and reversible plug. Now they're on Chromebooks, WinTel machines, and the Raspberry Pi. If the rumor is true, it was a really smooth move by Apple. It would be an extremely Apple-esque thing to hack an industry-wide movement just so that your laptop could be charged by any power brick made by any manufacturer at any time (even if your competitors get this functionality too).
- izacus 7y ago
  "The rumor" sounds like rather common history rewriting to from Apple fans. Do you have any sources for that rumor?
  - dannyw 7y ago
    The convergence of USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 (an Apple standard) isn’t an accident, but I doubt Apple covertly pushed it behind the scenes.
  - sneak 7y ago
    John Gruber made the claim. https://www.macrumors.com/2015/03/13/apple-invents-usb-c/ https://www.macrumors.com/2015/03/13/apple-invents-usb-c/ https://www.cultofmac.com/315989/is-this-proof-that-apple-invented-usb-c/ https://www.cultofmac.com/315989/is-this-proof-that-apple-in... https://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/03/14/apple-usbc https://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/03/14/apple-usbc

lyxsus1 7y ago

> It still means the thing is unusable when charging, no matter how long a charge lasts. That was the whole purpose of putting it in a bottom. The thing works several months on a single charge and it takes just a couple of hours to recharge. And it starts giving notification at least a day before battery's depleted. It's not aesthetics over function mantra, but realisation that they can't be decoupled or developed by separate divisions. That's what concerns me about Ive leaving. He and Jobs evidently had enough courage to ignore public opinion to make things the right way and in most cases it turned to be excellent decisions. With no successor I'm seriously afraid they'll eventually resort to safe decisions and become another Samsung/MS/Android/whatever..

kkarakk 7y ago
What happens when the battery conks out? throw away the mouse and buy a new one is what apple wants you to do but most people would prefer the safety net of being able to run wired in case the mouse battery started acting up. Remember this was a wireless mouse at a time when wireless was definitely not the preferred choice
- lyxsus1 7y ago
  > What happens when the battery conks out? throw away the mouse and buy a new one That's the easiest thing to do, yes. But you can bring it to apple care, they do battery replacement for smth like $35 I guess. And if it's factory problem they just replace it, afaik. > Remember this was a wireless mouse at a time when wireless was definitely not the preferred choice At the time it had regular batteries you could replace by yourself and we were talking about latest versions. But anyway, I don't see how it can be relevant.
- wastedhours 7y ago
  I think a lot of people forget the original wireless Magic Mouse was battery powered. I still have mine, and a couple of AAs (I think) will see it running for a good 'ol while. Nothing made me contemplate upgrading, and it's still a darn good experience.
izacus 7y ago