Apple's New Mouse Retains Flawed Charging Design 62
Apple has maintained the controversial bottom-charging design in its new $79-$99 USB-C Magic Mouse, released alongside the new iMac Tuesday, despite years of customer criticism. The port location, unchanged since 2015, renders the mouse unusable while charging.
Eh (Score:1)
Doesn't 5 minutes of charging give you a week of usage? Cue the outrage.
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Doesn't 5 minutes of charging give you a week of usage? Cue the outrage.
Not in my experience. It takes about 30 minutes to charge.
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Doesn't 5 minutes of charging give you a week of usage? Cue the outrage.
Not in my experience. It takes about 30 minutes to charge.
Sorry... I meant to say "to last a week". It takes over an hour to fully charge.
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I mostly WFH so mine sits upside down with a cable sticking out of it's butt 27 days a month looking really stupid in the process
All this, simply so they can force users to have wireless mice, seems, like I dunno, they fired Johnny Ives (ok, he "decided to retire", right) they can make sane decisions at some point
hmmm.. (Score:3)
The battery in the $5 mouse from Dollarama that I am using has been running for several months on a dollar store Panasonic Battery.
Re: hmmm.. (Score:3)
I honestly want someone from Apple to explain to me why Chinese knockoffs smart watches allow notifications to go to my phone and my watch simultaneously as well as last >10 days on a charge, yet my supposedly superior Apple Watch (at 4x the cost) lasts barely a day and doesnâ(TM)t allow for this.
The only reason I use the Apple Watch instead is because my cheap Chinese knockoff for $27 didnâ(TM)t track swimming.
Ridiculous.
And that is why.. (Score:2)
This just a stupid form over function decision to the detriment of its users.
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Pointless whining (Score:2, Insightful)
Charge it at night. Use it for months. Charge it one night.
Of all the massive things to complain about when it comes to Apple, this has to be the most ridiculous overblown one.
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Which night should people charge it? There's no battery meter.
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There is a web server inside the mouse which will tell you how much charge is remaining. You can also download the app which will send you an iMessage on the night it needs to be charged.
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I don't understand how this helps when the mouse is dead and needs recharging? You are trying to justify stupidity. Why would you put a charging port underneath when it could very easily be placed in the front?
It's like saying why even bother with seat belts and airbags since you can see the accident coming so just hit the breaks.
It's a terrible design in functionality and don't get me started on ergonomics. The design reminds me of this skit; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bhrBdgYTV8
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Why would you put a charging port underneath when it could very easily be placed in the front?
There may be a technical reason.. they choose to build a charging circuit that does not support charging while the unit is operating and they want it that way - in this case if the port was in an accessible position: People might think their mouse is broken, since they plug their mouse in and cannot operate the mouse while it is in charging mode.
Having the mouse powered on causes an additional load on the battery
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There may be a technical reason.. they choose to build a charging circuit that does not support charging while the unit is operating and they want it that way - in this case if the port was in an accessible position: People might think their mouse is broken, since they plug their mouse in and cannot operate the mouse while it is in charging mode.
No there isn't. Every other single wireless mouse on earth manages to be used while charging. This excuse is pure mental gymnastics.
The 'load' of the mouse sensor and wireless circuitry is measurable in the milliamps, and the charging input in amps. There neither needs to be any load on the battery while charging it as the USB input can handle the load, nor any issues with damaging the battery if loading it instead of taking operational power directly from the USB connection.
There is absolutely no jus
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1) It would be the only device they make that does this.
2) It's not powered off. It's still responding to BT endpoint queries.
You could move the goalposts on 2 and say, "well maybe they just can't handle the additional load of the capacitive surface and the emitter/sensor", but hopefully the need to move those goalposts will help you understand your hypothesis doesn't hold a gram of water.
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It's not powered off. It's still responding to BT endpoint queries.
hm. Safety feature, so the mouse is not in the user's palm when the battery overheats during charging and blows up in a fiery mess.
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There is a web server inside the mouse which will tell you how much charge is remaining. You can also download the app which will send you an iMessage on the night it needs to be charged.
... You think this is an acceptable substitute for a simple battery level indicator?
Re:Pointless whining (Score:4, Insightful)
At least be informed: the battery level of any Apple wireless device is visible in the Bluetooth menu/settings. It's been there since... well, at least for the many years I've had a magic mouse.
There's also a pretty visible notification that pops up telling you it's at 10%, which still lasts for a long time on these devices.
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If you're on a Mac you'll get a notification when it's getting low and that you should charge. *DAYS* in advance.
You're not going to be surprised.
As people have said elsewhere, there are actual things to complain about with these mice for most people. Comfort (for instance, it's not great for my carpal tunnel, I much prefer the trackpads personally), the way the alternate buttons work, all sorts of things. But the charging thing? It's overblown.
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Overblown? Sure. But it's also the easiest thing in the physical design to change. They could very easily keep the shell (minus the new hole for the port obviously) and shift around the internals all while sacrificing nothing, not even form or beauty or whatever they pretend to care about. Either Apple's hardware designers are naturally bad, or Apple leadership forces them to be bad.
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However- that doesn't mean criticism over its stupidity is unwarranted.
Because let's face it- it is stupid.
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You literally have to turn the fucking thing upside down, and leave it that way, to charge it. And ultimately- just why?
Why can't they, like every other fucking company on this planet, put the charging port in a reasonable spot.
It's fucking stupid.
Goofy! (Score:2)
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To each their own, I guess. I don't like lightweight mice, or keyboards. Not only do I actively use it, but my Magic Mouse is the lighter of the two mice I actively use. The mouse I use on my PC (Logitech G502) even without the add-in weights is heavier than the Magic Mouse.
The one thing I really think Apple got right was making the whole surface of the mouse active. Finger scrolling in whatever direction you need, while simultaneously moving the pointer with your wrist, is really nice.
This is a purposeful design decision (Score:1)
They don't want folks to use it while it's charging. It's a wireless mouse so they designed it to be non-functional while it's plugged in.
Users might have to adapt a little bit. Reasonable people can disagree with the decision. But people who write about technological design should not be entirely confounded by this 10 years after the launch.
Re: This is a purposeful design decision (Score:1)
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What part of "Apple wants its products to be used in the way it thinks all users will want it to be" moto of Apple did you miss in the memo? That's the story with practically every Apple product. The last Apple product I bought was in 2016 and was a used 2011 Macbook Air because of the form factor and portability, and I immediately installed Parrot Linux on it without even booting it into MacOS. Some of their products are pretty nice if you can circumvent their O/S on them.
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"But I urgently want to use the mouse, and I don't care if it is still connected to a socket!" Then buy another mouse to your liking.
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It is brilliant design. It does exactly what Apple is intending: Don't use your mouse while charging. Don't damage your charging port by pulling on a cable. Keep your mouse free from any entanglement while working.
"But I urgently want to use the mouse, and I don't care if it is still connected to a socket!" Then buy another mouse to your liking.
If your charge port is going to be damaged by mousing around with the cable attached, it wasn't made very well in the first place, IMO.
That said, who actually buys these things? I don't know anyone who uses a mouse. Trackpads are so much more user-friendly for pretty much all purposes, and they don't have any problem being used with a cable connected, because like all reasonable input devices, they don't move around.
Mice have always sucked, whether you're talking about roller ball mice or optical mice. T
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But what I don't understand is you like a trackpad, I find it hopeless and prefer the red clit (Trackpoint) of this Thinkpad.
To each his own
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Don't damage your charging port by pulling on a cable. Did you have a straight face while typing that?
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"The port location... renders the mouse unusable while charging." They don't want folks to use it while it's charging. It's a wireless mouse so they designed it to be non-functional while it's plugged in. Users might have to adapt a little bit. Reasonable people can disagree with the decision. But people who write about technological design should not be entirely confounded by this 10 years after the launch.
When literally every other wireless mouse in existence has this one figured out, it's completely valid to complain about a crap design no matter how long after the launch. I have a super cheap wireless mouse that can plug in (at the front of the mouse) and still be used just as a wired mouse while it recharges. I don't see any detriment to the mouse or the user in this design. Apple just doesn't like seeing ports on their products while in use. Which may make sense to a designer, but designers that aren't a
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When literally every other wireless mouse in existence has this one figured out, it's completely valid to complain about a crap design no matter how long after the launch. I have a super cheap wireless mouse that can plug in (at the front of the mouse) and still be used just as a wired mouse while it recharges
Right next to my Apple wireless mouse is an Apple wireless keyboard. When I get the "Keyboard battery very low" message, I just plug it in for an hour while I keep on working. Why can't my mouse work the same way?
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My PC laptop has had the same wireless mouse that I charge and use while charging for almost 10 years, which is about 9 years past what Apple wants you to own that device for.
Speaking as a MBP owner.
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"people who write about technological design should not be entirely confounded by this 10 years after the launch.
Maybe they should if it continues to be confounding after 10 years. Maybe they should if it is actually MORE confounding after 10 years of iteration and hindsight.
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Apple is f*ing losing it (Score:2)
Doesn't surprise me (Score:2)
"Looks" appears to be very important for Apple products. Having an open hole would be considered ugly. But, to be fair, I looked up picture of the mouse and putting a hole on the lower part of it where it can continue to be used while plugged in doesn't appear to be practical. Does it tell you that it's about to run out of juice so that you can charge it at the end of the day for the next few months?
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"Looks" appears to be very important for Apple products. Having an open hole would be considered ugly.
Perhaps we should talk about how it "looks" to have your mouse sitting there on its side, rendered unusable because the charging cable is plugged into the bottom... while you're sitting there, having to use a second mouse.
I had a rechargeable bluetooth travel mouse 15+ years ago that would let me continue to use it while it was charging.
Not surprised (Score:2)
Why am I not surprised? Apple has always been a design company. Form over function in pretty much all their design. The only reason to put the USB port in that location is because they think it it looks better like that.
Mitch Hedberg (Score:2)
Escalator temporarily stairs - sorry for the convenience.
All rechargeable mouses suck (Score:2)
Let me swap the damn battery. And use AAs not AAAs. Same with game controllers.
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Looking at the dimensions for this mouse, it wouldn't be able to fit a AAA in there even if you lubed it with Vaseline or grease.
Re: All rechargeable mouses suck (Score:2)
Meh (Score:2)
It's odd... (Score:2)
I bought one of those Jellycomb wireless trackballs a few years ago, and I've never charged it.
And yet it just seems to keep working. Almost like magic. I figure give it a few more years and I'll have to find the USB charging cable, but from an EE perspective, I'm honestly impressed.
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Sometimes I wonder if some of those trackballs have a way to scarf some small amounts of energy when moved around, but not so much that it gives perceptible resistance.
For me, at work, the generic Dell mice work well enough, assuming they have a scroll wheel. For home/gaming, a Bad Dragon mouse is relatively inexpensive, and once you set up the macros and buttons, you don't need the included software. Their MMO mouse is pretty solid and has a nice DPI control.
It's an overall Apple plan to return to... (Score:2)
Can we convert mouse motion into electricity? (Score:3)
When you use a mouse, a common gesture is to quickly snap your wrist back to reposition the mouse and continue moving the pointer. Always wondered whether some internal mechanism couldn't be derived to capture some of that motion and convert into a trickle charge.
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When you use a mouse, a common gesture is to quickly snap your wrist back to reposition the mouse and continue moving the pointer. Always wondered whether some internal mechanism couldn't be derived to capture some of that motion and convert into a trickle charge.
OK, Reagan. We're not falling for that again!
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The cost is resistance to the motion. People can be very sensitive to the mass of their mouse. Having one that resists rapid movements, even by a very tiny amount, could be pretty unpalatable. That being said, there are probably plenty of people who wouldn't care... So the next question becomes- is it really worthwhile? I'd love to know the answer to that.
Apple used to make great mice. (Score:2)
Then Jobs came back and while he deservers all the credit in the world for making Apple the power house it is now, it was under his direction that we got th
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No Image (Score:1)
Really? Why did I have to perform a search to find out what the charging port looks like? The summary links to Apple's product page. It has one overhead picture of the mouse. Not even a side image so you can tell how tall it is. No back image, though tons of companies don't show product backs. It's nearing 2025. Why are companies still too lazy to put in the tiniest effort when selling their products online? Scammers do a better job listing their fake products than real companies do of their actual
Car can't be driven while fueling (Score:2)
I mean is that next? Once and awhile to let your mouse charge isn't a big deal, especially since you can charge it for five minutes and get enough use out of it to plug it in that night to charge it. In addition you have a ton of ways to tell how much power it has left...so..you know, be an adult and charge it before it's dead?
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There's a valid reason you can't refill the explosive fuel of your vehicle in motion.
Now military pilots? They can. You, though? No.
But the real analogy you were looking for was:
What's next? Stopping your light rail/subway train to charge it?!?!
Can the stupid design be mitigated against? Of course it can. But why the fuck do we have to?
Maybe... (Score:2)