9 ms·

I think this highlights how not black-and-white this is. Some of the focus on design are clearly what made Apple so popular and tech people can be dismissive of

I think this highlights how not black-and-white this is. Some of the focus on design are clearly what made Apple so popular and tech people can be dismissive of that. The magic mouse is so much better than any other mouse I've used (because the scrolling is so much better) and the charge port being on the bottom has not been an issue a single time over multiple years.

Ecco 4y ago
I’m curious: how is the bottom charge port not an issue for you? What happens if your mouse runs out of battery while you’re working?
- rmatt2000 4y ago
  You get a low-battery notice when there are only a few hours of charge left. For me, there's always been enough time to finish up my work and let it charge overnight.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- b3morales 4y ago
  For me, in 6+ years of daily use this has only happened to me twice or so that I can recall. I do check the level from time to time so I can be sure to charge it overnight. But even if you forget the trick is that the battery charges surprisingly quickly from 0 to "enough to get through the rest of the day". Coffee break quickly, 10, maybe 15 minutes. So I do keyboard-only stuff for a bit and/or step away for a breather. It's been a non-issue in my personal experience.
  - dolni 4y ago
    > I do check the level from time to time so I can be sure to charge it overnight. So here's the rub, isn't it? Consumer mice from decades ago did NOT require you to check battery levels. There's no good reason for a charging/wired port on the bottom of the mouse. It may only be a problem rarely, but it could just not be a problem AT ALL.
- SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
  The only time it was an ever an issue when I used one, was I plugged it in, I went to the bathroom, I got a coffee. And it was charged enough to use it until I could charge it for hours later. The sleep cycle of a mouse microprocessor is 99.9%+. A few minutes charge will get you hours of use.
- tikhonj 4y ago
  That's what I was paranoid about with wireless mice: what if the battery runs out while I'm in the middle of a competitive, time-sensitive game? With my Logitech mouse, I can plug it in from the front, so it's a minor inconvenience. Of course, just thinking about using the Magic Mouse for FPS games hurts my wrists, so it in particular was never a real consideration anyhow :P
- librish 4y ago
  I get a battery notification when the power is running low. That means I usually have a couple of days of usage before it's completely out. So then I charge it while I go to lunch or overnight.
  - teakettle42 4y ago
    I never remember to plug it in after I’ve finished my work and am ready to leave for lunch or for the day. Short of putting a post-it note on my screen, I don’t think I ever will. My brain doesn’t work that way, and the point of technology is to support me, not for me to support technology. Requiring users to perform their own async mental scheduling of a trivially forgettable pending task like “plug in the mouse” is bad design. Perhaps some people have an innate ability to perform that kind of task scheduling without it being a significant cognitive load, but many others do not.
    - Kon-Peki 4y ago
      I think you must be exaggerating a little bit, because if true then it doesn't really matter if the charging port is on the bottom. You need a corded mouse. Apple doesn't make any, but I've yet to see any 3rd party USB mouse that a Mac won't work fine with. I've got a Logitech connected to a USB-C dongle for the infrequent times that I want a mouse on my MBP. Mouse+Dongle is also cheaper than a Magic Mouse.
      - teakettle42 4y ago
        I’m not exaggerating at all. I can try to drill “remember to plug in the mouse” into my head, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll forget. The previous magic mouse worked fine; if I ran out of juice, I just swapped the batteries immediately and kept going. If the current Magic Mouse supported charging while in use, I’d just do that. Problem solved. The turtle-mode charging is a ridiculous design constraint for those of us for whom “remember this trivial and stupid task to be performed at some arbitrary later time” does not come at all naturally. My (ridiculous) solution is two magic mice. When one dies, I swap it for the other. No cognitive load, no breaking flow — but it’s silly to have to keep a spare $99 mouse around to solve this problem. My employer has plenty of spare magic mice floating around, or I’d probably just buy myself a Microsoft mouse that uses AA batteries.
altarius 4y ago
I don't think it's the design, it's the usability. I might argue that it has always more about usability than design. Sure, the iconic designs of the G4 Cube, iMac, metal Powerbooks and later Macbook were what drew people in, but the usability is what kept many people with Apple. Is the better scrolling a design or a tech thing? Probably tech, but I'm sure it's only that good because someone really understood how people use it and what it really needs to do well and then insisted that the tech worked flawlessly.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  If I had to start from first principles and I had to either be the tech person who figured everything out or the person who insisted it work flawlessly, I'm pretty sure I know which would be the easier job.
- slowmovintarget 4y ago
  Usability is a sub-discipline of user experience, which is a sub-discipline of... wait for it.. design. Design, from designare - to mark out, to prepare the plans for, especially to plan the form and structure of Usability is just one area of emphasis for design. Apple simply included too few elements of usability in their efforts.
  - altarius 4y ago
    Definitely. It's also mostly Steve Jobs'/Apple's definition. But in the context of discussing Apple, many often solely talk about the shiny exteriors and looks of Apple products while neglecting usability. We may disagree, but the usability used to be and maybe is again the main selling (or at least "staying") point. I think this was lost a bit during Apple's "high design" years before Ives departure. It was often form over function.
rob74 4y ago
For me, the charge port at the bottom is a clear case of design being more important than functionality. Of course, if you're the kind of person that always remembers to charge their mouse before the battery runs out, it's not an issue for you, but for the "rest of us", having the option to charge it and use it at the same time would sure be handy...
- ambrose2 4y ago
  This topic comes up again and again, and what I’ve noticed is that folks who use the mouse often find that it lasts for months and months without recharging. Folks that like the mouse (myself included) agree that the frequency of charging is very low, while folks that don’t like the mouse will say that it’s unacceptable.
  - kalleboo 4y ago
    I use the wireless Apple keyboard and trackpad, which both have similar battery lives, but when the battery runs out it always somehow happens to be right before a meeting where I really need to plug it in and use it right now (and these days when everything else is USB-C, instead I'm scrambling to find where my damn lightning cable has gone) Although I get why they would not put the port on the back - their Lightning cables are not built for the repeated motion/strain of a plugged-in mouse. Anything more strain than plugging your phone in and setting it down causes the cables to break down in months.
    - fmajid 4y ago
      The cables don’t last because of pretty but ineffective strain relief. Another failure squarely imputable to Jony Ive.
    - _ph_ 4y ago
      I can only recommend using BetterTouchTool for adding more guestures to the mouse - and it comes with a nice feature, it reminds me when the charge of the mouse goes below 25%. This gives me several days to recharge it before it actually gets low.
munawwar 4y ago
Its battery lasts for several weeks. So I never realize it's battery hitting close to zero. And unluckily its hit bottom several times at the beginning of a work day. It wouldn't have hurt if they made the thing useable while plugged in.
- jfengel 4y ago
  And the screen doesn't pop up a toast? It's an awkward fix but straightforward.
  - munawwar 4y ago
    It does, but at the most inconvenient time always :D
visarga 4y ago
I prefer the wheel of Logitech mx master 3.
- dandellion 4y ago
  Me too. It would be even better if we could disable mouse acceleration on MacOS, it's terrible and drives me nuts.
  - monetus 4y ago
    Since someone brought up trackballs, the scrollwheel on CST trackballs are awesomely, in the literal sense of the word, smoother than any other I've felt.
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    Apparently there's a Terminal command that can do this: https://www.isiko.de/how-to-disable/ https://www.isiko.de/how-to-disable/
  - tehnub 4y ago
    One little trick I use is to turn the tracking speed all the way down in System Preferences, and then set it as high as I need in the Logitech settings. This makes the acceleration pretty unnoticeable for me. Also could use something like this: https://github.com/ther0n/UnnaturalScrollWheels https://github.com/ther0n/UnnaturalScrollWheels
  - initplus 4y ago
    MX Master 3 has inbuilt mouse acceleration, even if you can set acceleration to zero in software it's still there in the hardware.
mlindner 4y ago
The magic mouse doesn't work at all for me because I want to be able to right click while left click is down and vice-versa for some special operations for some applications. Magic mouse only lets you click one button at a time.
azemetre 4y ago
I'm not a fan of the magic mouse because the ergonomics isn't good for your hand over extend uses of time. I wish Apple would make a "magic" trackball.
- astrange 4y ago
  You could use the trackpad. The appropriate mouse size is different for different people (like headphones) because it depends on your hand shape.
Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
> because the scrolling is so much better Unless you use any application that requires more or less precise scrolls. Like any game, or any map in the browser. The experience of using Google maps / Apple maps / Openstreetmap with Magic Mouse is unbelievably shitty. Almost every time I want to make a click it interprets it as a scroll and zooms in or out. I eventually replaced magic mouse because of this with a regular mouse when I use an Apple computer, and it is much much better.
- goosedragons 4y ago
  The free and horizontal scrolling benefits can also be found on much better mice. Logitech has some nice ones that allow both ratcheted and free scrolling with the click of a button.

Ecco 4y ago

I’m curious: how is the bottom charge port not an issue for you? What happens if your mouse runs out of battery while you’re working?

rmatt2000 4y ago
You get a low-battery notice when there are only a few hours of charge left. For me, there's always been enough time to finish up my work and let it charge overnight.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
b3morales 4y ago
For me, in 6+ years of daily use this has only happened to me twice or so that I can recall. I do check the level from time to time so I can be sure to charge it overnight. But even if you forget the trick is that the battery charges surprisingly quickly from 0 to "enough to get through the rest of the day". Coffee break quickly, 10, maybe 15 minutes. So I do keyboard-only stuff for a bit and/or step away for a breather. It's been a non-issue in my personal experience.
- dolni 4y ago
  > I do check the level from time to time so I can be sure to charge it overnight. So here's the rub, isn't it? Consumer mice from decades ago did NOT require you to check battery levels. There's no good reason for a charging/wired port on the bottom of the mouse. It may only be a problem rarely, but it could just not be a problem AT ALL.
SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
The only time it was an ever an issue when I used one, was I plugged it in, I went to the bathroom, I got a coffee. And it was charged enough to use it until I could charge it for hours later. The sleep cycle of a mouse microprocessor is 99.9%+. A few minutes charge will get you hours of use.
tikhonj 4y ago
That's what I was paranoid about with wireless mice: what if the battery runs out while I'm in the middle of a competitive, time-sensitive game? With my Logitech mouse, I can plug it in from the front, so it's a minor inconvenience. Of course, just thinking about using the Magic Mouse for FPS games hurts my wrists, so it in particular was never a real consideration anyhow :P
librish 4y ago
I get a battery notification when the power is running low. That means I usually have a couple of days of usage before it's completely out. So then I charge it while I go to lunch or overnight.
- teakettle42 4y ago
  I never remember to plug it in after I’ve finished my work and am ready to leave for lunch or for the day. Short of putting a post-it note on my screen, I don’t think I ever will. My brain doesn’t work that way, and the point of technology is to support me, not for me to support technology. Requiring users to perform their own async mental scheduling of a trivially forgettable pending task like “plug in the mouse” is bad design. Perhaps some people have an innate ability to perform that kind of task scheduling without it being a significant cognitive load, but many others do not.
  - Kon-Peki 4y ago
    I think you must be exaggerating a little bit, because if true then it doesn't really matter if the charging port is on the bottom. You need a corded mouse. Apple doesn't make any, but I've yet to see any 3rd party USB mouse that a Mac won't work fine with. I've got a Logitech connected to a USB-C dongle for the infrequent times that I want a mouse on my MBP. Mouse+Dongle is also cheaper than a Magic Mouse.
    - teakettle42 4y ago
      I’m not exaggerating at all. I can try to drill “remember to plug in the mouse” into my head, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll forget. The previous magic mouse worked fine; if I ran out of juice, I just swapped the batteries immediately and kept going. If the current Magic Mouse supported charging while in use, I’d just do that. Problem solved. The turtle-mode charging is a ridiculous design constraint for those of us for whom “remember this trivial and stupid task to be performed at some arbitrary later time” does not come at all naturally. My (ridiculous) solution is two magic mice. When one dies, I swap it for the other. No cognitive load, no breaking flow — but it’s silly to have to keep a spare $99 mouse around to solve this problem. My employer has plenty of spare magic mice floating around, or I’d probably just buy myself a Microsoft mouse that uses AA batteries.

altarius 4y ago

I don't think it's the design, it's the usability. I might argue that it has always more about usability than design. Sure, the iconic designs of the G4 Cube, iMac, metal Powerbooks and later Macbook were what drew people in, but the usability is what kept many people with Apple. Is the better scrolling a design or a tech thing? Probably tech, but I'm sure it's only that good because someone really understood how people use it and what it really needs to do well and then insisted that the tech worked flawlessly.

robertlagrant 4y ago
If I had to start from first principles and I had to either be the tech person who figured everything out or the person who insisted it work flawlessly, I'm pretty sure I know which would be the easier job.
slowmovintarget 4y ago
Usability is a sub-discipline of user experience, which is a sub-discipline of... wait for it.. design. Design, from designare - to mark out, to prepare the plans for, especially to plan the form and structure of Usability is just one area of emphasis for design. Apple simply included too few elements of usability in their efforts.
- altarius 4y ago
  Definitely. It's also mostly Steve Jobs'/Apple's definition. But in the context of discussing Apple, many often solely talk about the shiny exteriors and looks of Apple products while neglecting usability. We may disagree, but the usability used to be and maybe is again the main selling (or at least "staying") point. I think this was lost a bit during Apple's "high design" years before Ives departure. It was often form over function.

rob74 4y ago

For me, the charge port at the bottom is a clear case of design being more important than functionality. Of course, if you're the kind of person that always remembers to charge their mouse before the battery runs out, it's not an issue for you, but for the "rest of us", having the option to charge it and use it at the same time would sure be handy...

ambrose2 4y ago
This topic comes up again and again, and what I’ve noticed is that folks who use the mouse often find that it lasts for months and months without recharging. Folks that like the mouse (myself included) agree that the frequency of charging is very low, while folks that don’t like the mouse will say that it’s unacceptable.
- kalleboo 4y ago
  I use the wireless Apple keyboard and trackpad, which both have similar battery lives, but when the battery runs out it always somehow happens to be right before a meeting where I really need to plug it in and use it right now (and these days when everything else is USB-C, instead I'm scrambling to find where my damn lightning cable has gone) Although I get why they would not put the port on the back - their Lightning cables are not built for the repeated motion/strain of a plugged-in mouse. Anything more strain than plugging your phone in and setting it down causes the cables to break down in months.
  - fmajid 4y ago
    The cables don’t last because of pretty but ineffective strain relief. Another failure squarely imputable to Jony Ive.
  - _ph_ 4y ago
    I can only recommend using BetterTouchTool for adding more guestures to the mouse - and it comes with a nice feature, it reminds me when the charge of the mouse goes below 25%. This gives me several days to recharge it before it actually gets low.

munawwar 4y ago

Its battery lasts for several weeks. So I never realize it's battery hitting close to zero. And unluckily its hit bottom several times at the beginning of a work day. It wouldn't have hurt if they made the thing useable while plugged in.

jfengel 4y ago
And the screen doesn't pop up a toast? It's an awkward fix but straightforward.
- munawwar 4y ago
  It does, but at the most inconvenient time always :D

visarga 4y ago

I prefer the wheel of Logitech mx master 3.

dandellion 4y ago
Me too. It would be even better if we could disable mouse acceleration on MacOS, it's terrible and drives me nuts.
- monetus 4y ago
  Since someone brought up trackballs, the scrollwheel on CST trackballs are awesomely, in the literal sense of the word, smoother than any other I've felt.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  Apparently there's a Terminal command that can do this: https://www.isiko.de/how-to-disable/ https://www.isiko.de/how-to-disable/
- tehnub 4y ago
  One little trick I use is to turn the tracking speed all the way down in System Preferences, and then set it as high as I need in the Logitech settings. This makes the acceleration pretty unnoticeable for me. Also could use something like this: https://github.com/ther0n/UnnaturalScrollWheels https://github.com/ther0n/UnnaturalScrollWheels
- initplus 4y ago
  MX Master 3 has inbuilt mouse acceleration, even if you can set acceleration to zero in software it's still there in the hardware.

mlindner 4y ago

The magic mouse doesn't work at all for me because I want to be able to right click while left click is down and vice-versa for some special operations for some applications. Magic mouse only lets you click one button at a time.

azemetre 4y ago

I'm not a fan of the magic mouse because the ergonomics isn't good for your hand over extend uses of time. I wish Apple would make a "magic" trackball.

astrange 4y ago
You could use the trackpad. The appropriate mouse size is different for different people (like headphones) because it depends on your hand shape.

Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago

> because the scrolling is so much better Unless you use any application that requires more or less precise scrolls. Like any game, or any map in the browser. The experience of using Google maps / Apple maps / Openstreetmap with Magic Mouse is unbelievably shitty. Almost every time I want to make a click it interprets it as a scroll and zooms in or out. I eventually replaced magic mouse because of this with a regular mouse when I use an Apple computer, and it is much much better.

goosedragons 4y ago
The free and horizontal scrolling benefits can also be found on much better mice. Logitech has some nice ones that allow both ratcheted and free scrolling with the click of a button.