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> I can type on a 25-year-old iMac USB keyboard attached to a 2023 Mac Mini with no adapters! What stunning longevity. The keyboard is fine though laptop-sized

by Lammy 3y ago

> I can type on a 25-year-old iMac USB keyboard attached to a 2023 Mac Mini with no adapters! What stunning longevity. The keyboard is fine though laptop-sized with cramped arrow keys, but the original revision iMac puck mouse is a famous case of form over function. It's not actually as bad as its reputation suggests, but Apple still silently admitted to the flawed design by adding a little centered dimple to the butan on the later five-colors version https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_puck_mouse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_puck_mouse “There's no reason that the Macintosh won't be an absolutely perfect gaming platform for anything that you wanna do. […] The only thing that you wanna do with a Mac as a serious gamer — you wanna pull out the silly one-button mouse and plug in a three-button mouse pretty quick, but aside from that…” — John Carmack, 1999 https://youtu.be/XzbFgzgy1mc?t=4791 https://youtu.be/XzbFgzgy1mc?t=4791

vel0city 3y ago
I was a small child when the iMac and its hockey puck mouse came out. I remember being a small kid and thinking the hockey puck mouse was actually pretty great, it was way easier for my small hands to handle and the single button made things easier to click on for the educational software I was using at school compared to the Packard Bell or HP or Dell mice I would use at home or at friend's houses. I'm actually looking for a similar kind of mouse for my small child today. He can't quite palm a mouse very well, and he often gets mixed up with right click and scroll and scroll click. When I get him focused on the right mouse button he can play some basic mouse-based games but he'll often end up getting distracted by the mouse wheel or right click which can sometimes drop him out of the games he's wanting to play. Don't get me wrong the hockey puck mouse was probably atrocious for adult hands but as a little kid it was actually pretty nice.
- WWLink 3y ago
  Get an iMac mouse off eBay then. They’re usb and still work fine with any computer. Edit: but there is one concern - they are not optical mice and use a ball. So if they’re really young you might want something more like an apple pro mouse
  - vel0city 3y ago
    There's a few problems with the puck mouse. 1) They're all old and are of questionable state second hand. 2) They're all ball mice, as you mentioned there's issues with those over an optical mouse 3) They almost always have ridiculously short cables. They're designed to be used with the Apple USB keyboards which had the extra USB port on the side of the keyboard that they would plug into. Sure, some of these problems could just be overlooked or solved with accessories but in the end I'd rather just have something new which I know will work well and won't require me to get a USB extension cable or whatever. I'd really like something in a similar enough form factor but wireless and optical.
    - WWLink 3y ago
      You can buy a travel/laptop mouse and those can get pretty tiny, but they still have 2 buttons and a scroll wheel. I find using a single button mouse an interesting exercise - both windows and MacOS are usable without it, MacOS in particular you can still do ctrl+left click to get a right click. It sounds silly but when I use a mouse my left hand is still usually on the keyboard so it's not really a big deal. I haven't done it in years, but I didn't really feel like I missed having 2 buttons and a scroll wheel when I used a 'pro mouse' lol. Now, I could rant for a while about how awful the ergonomics of the magic mouse are!
mewse-hn 3y ago
One funny thing about that mouse quote from John Carmack is that he was a proponent of a certain level of minimalism in his games - Quake doesn't have a "use" key, you toggle switches by shooting them or pushing them with your face
chasd00 3y ago
i remember the single button mouse being weird at first. Apple person: my computer can do anything yours can and better window person: can you right-click?

by Lammy 3y ago

vel0city 3y ago

I was a small child when the iMac and its hockey puck mouse came out. I remember being a small kid and thinking the hockey puck mouse was actually pretty great, it was way easier for my small hands to handle and the single button made things easier to click on for the educational software I was using at school compared to the Packard Bell or HP or Dell mice I would use at home or at friend's houses. I'm actually looking for a similar kind of mouse for my small child today. He can't quite palm a mouse very well, and he often gets mixed up with right click and scroll and scroll click. When I get him focused on the right mouse button he can play some basic mouse-based games but he'll often end up getting distracted by the mouse wheel or right click which can sometimes drop him out of the games he's wanting to play. Don't get me wrong the hockey puck mouse was probably atrocious for adult hands but as a little kid it was actually pretty nice.

WWLink 3y ago
Get an iMac mouse off eBay then. They’re usb and still work fine with any computer. Edit: but there is one concern - they are not optical mice and use a ball. So if they’re really young you might want something more like an apple pro mouse
- vel0city 3y ago
  There's a few problems with the puck mouse. 1) They're all old and are of questionable state second hand. 2) They're all ball mice, as you mentioned there's issues with those over an optical mouse 3) They almost always have ridiculously short cables. They're designed to be used with the Apple USB keyboards which had the extra USB port on the side of the keyboard that they would plug into. Sure, some of these problems could just be overlooked or solved with accessories but in the end I'd rather just have something new which I know will work well and won't require me to get a USB extension cable or whatever. I'd really like something in a similar enough form factor but wireless and optical.
  - WWLink 3y ago
    You can buy a travel/laptop mouse and those can get pretty tiny, but they still have 2 buttons and a scroll wheel. I find using a single button mouse an interesting exercise - both windows and MacOS are usable without it, MacOS in particular you can still do ctrl+left click to get a right click. It sounds silly but when I use a mouse my left hand is still usually on the keyboard so it's not really a big deal. I haven't done it in years, but I didn't really feel like I missed having 2 buttons and a scroll wheel when I used a 'pro mouse' lol. Now, I could rant for a while about how awful the ergonomics of the magic mouse are!

mewse-hn 3y ago

One funny thing about that mouse quote from John Carmack is that he was a proponent of a certain level of minimalism in his games - Quake doesn't have a "use" key, you toggle switches by shooting them or pushing them with your face

chasd00 3y ago

i remember the single button mouse being weird at first. Apple person: my computer can do anything yours can and better window person: can you right-click?