[f1shy]

> release something really really mind mindbogglingly stupid that it should be embarrassing

I’m still trying to understand who came with the idea of charging the mouse from under, instead of from a position that would allow to use the mouse while charging…

[askvictor]

I believe that was intentional, to prevent people using it plugged in, which would mean most people would keep it plugged in all the time, so it wouldn't be a wireless mouse anymore, but also degrade the battery lifespan.

[fainpul]

I also believe that was intentional. But the reason was the typical Apple / Jobs hubris of knowing better than the users. The desktop looks cleaner with fewer cables, so they wanted to enforce use without the cable plugged in.

I don't have a source for this, but I'm pretty sure I've read something like that a long time ago.

[chocochunks]

It was intentional to recycle the design of the Magic Mouse 1 which used AA batteries. The Magic Touchpad and Keyboard came out the exact same day as the Magic Mouse 2 and they don't share the Magic Mouse 2's stupid design. They both have perfectly usable ports on the front and even work when wired without pairing.

[treyd]

Maybe they should have made the batteries replaceable and make it operable without batteries installed.

Or just ship a wired version for the people who want that.

[userbinator]

Cycling the battery continuously is worse for lifespan.

[benj111]

Right.... So.... Add some charging circuitry. Is it a problem if people don't use it as a wireless mouse anyway.

Yes it's very apple to force users to use devices how Apple wants, but that isn't a particularly good reason.

[Sharlin]

Textbook case of form over function. Either an engineering constraint forced by the design and deemed an acceptable trade-off by higher-ups, or maybe more likely, the designer just thought a visible charging port would’ve ruined their design.

[tavavex]

While the exact reason has never been documented, if you look at that mouse's design, you'll see that its first generation had a regular battery compartment on the bottom. When gen 2 arrived, they fully reused the same shell and only replaced that bottom part to now be an integrated battery with a charging port instead of a compartment for AAs. Moving the charging port would've required a brand new design, since every edge of the mouse tapers way too much for a port to be placed anywhere else. They would also probably need to change more of the internal structure, as opposed to just swapping a battery module and changing the bottom lid. In this case the constraint seems to just be about functionality and manufacturing. Apple has made many controversial design decisions that have no functional justifications in the past, yet people keep bringing up the mouse.

[userbinator]

Where should a cord on a mouse be when it's charging? The same place as any cord on a mouse should be, i.e. the tail, would be the commonsense answer. Indeed this is how all other dual-mode mouses do it.

[opan]

How many generations of that mouse design have there been now? Any changes to it? Wireless charging support could be a nice bandaid on that terrible design.

[gandalfian]

Modern wireless mice from logitech and microsoft last for a year or two on a pair of aa batteries. There is no point making them rechargeable any more. You can always use rechargeable aa nihms if you really want to, but personally I just have 50p of alkaline aa's and in two years I will have to change them again. Some things do get better :)

[sandermvanvliet]

Let me introduce you to the world of _devices for keeping small kids asleep_.

For whatever reason they won’t work when hooked up to a charger and of course the moment you need them most the batteries have gone dead so you must charge…

At this point I can’t help but think that the people who design these things really hate parents

[specialist]

Their laptop touchpads are the only Apple "pointer" input device I've ever liked. (And by extension, the iPhone and iPad.)

I hate myself every time I settle for yet another disposable Microsoft mouse.

Though, I would have killed for an Apple Pencil, back when I was a CAD jockey.

For me, the butterfly keyboard was Apple's mostest worstest user interface design decision.

(Doubly so because it persisted for so long. I love that Apple (and others) try new things. But I don't understand commitment to design failures.)

Source: I've been an Apple partisan since the Apple ][. Even stubbornly resisting Amiga's siren call.

[jaffa2]

> For me, the butterfly keyboard was Apple's mostest worstest user interface design decision.

I really liked the butterfly kb. It was responsive, and you could hit the key cap anywhere and it would register.*

Subsequent mac book keyboards imo are all terrible and suffer from the terrible issue of sponge-ness that means i can literally press a key cap in a slightly off centre location and it Does Not Register. Its like the key movement is separate from the actuation. I have way more mis key and missing letter using later post butterfly kbs than i ever did. The worst part is this is ‘normal’ and not a fault. You just have to press harder and in the centre.

* except when it was in for work i had 3x top case replaced on my old mbp