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> 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…

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.

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.

The reason people talk about the mouse is that it's one of the worst ideas they ever had.

At the time, I remember someone claimed that the reason was that they were afraid people could leave it plugged in for convenience. Apple thought that would lead to a worse experience because their mouse was designed to be used wirelessly. I think it was actually more related to aesthetic "icks" by the designers, because people would have disconnected the cable if it was in the way.

Honestly, as a user of the mouse, I think the main reason people talk about the mouse is bike shedding. Charging isn't a problem in actual use, but everyone sure has an opinion on it.

There are plenty of contenders for 'worst ideas they ever had' and this just isn't up there.

I agree, I always found the charging port location to be a total non-issue. The battery life is long, charging is fast, and you get warned that the battery level is low long before the mouse dies.

In fact, the real crime of the Magic Mouse is how awkward it is to switch it between machines.

"If you see a stylus, they blew it"

That's a quote from Steve Jobs about how basically all of their competition (except Google) had made the mistake of trying to ship desktop software on phones. The problem with the stylus is that it's a hardware workaround for a software problem: the sort of cost-reduced engineering you get when a company wants to "have a mobile strategy" without actually putting in the time and effort to make something good.

The Magic Mouse is the exact same kind of "we couldn't care less" cost-reduction. The charging port is on the bottom because that's the only place you can put a charging port with the existing all-glass design. Because they re-used an existing design intended for removable batteries. This is such an uncharacteristically un-Apple move, and one so obviously detrimental to the design of the device, that people (including myself) actually psyopped themselves into thinking Apple had deliberately designed the mouse to enforce wireless usage.

And, to be clear, Apple has never done that.

All their other peripherals with rechargeable batteries in them will let you use them fully wired if you plug them in. In fact, if you somehow engineered a way to move the charging port somewhere less stupid, the Magic Mouse probably would work plugged-in, too.

If you see a charging port on the bottom, they blew it.

Yet it is one thing I love very much about my MX anywhere 3. The wire connection is simply more performance and I get to use it when I did not charge. It is also compatible with any non-Bluetooth device.

> it's one of the worst ideas

It's still one of the worst ideas. Insult to injury.

> I think it was actually more related to aesthetic "icks" by the designers, because people would have disconnected the cable if it was in the way.

A lot of people really will just anxiously leave the cable in the whole time if given the opportunity. I have a wired/wireless Logitech mouse and I confess that I hardly ever remove the cable. Between this, and the space and connector issues of adding a "normal" cable connection as referred to in the grandparent, we have two reasons to think that Apple's decision wasn't all that clearly bad, let alone one of their worst.

Nobody leaves the cables attached. Except wanna be pro gamers who think a couple milliseconds will help them more than practice to "git gud". Every mouse I have is wireless, and I almost never use them plugged in, except for the one on the server that get used so rarely it's self-discharged should probably be wired but I simply don't have any wired ones left. Just plug them in overnight every once in a while, golden.

But what's your basis for assuming that everyone has your habits in this respect?

This is not even close to the worst ideas Apple ever had, even if you're only talking about mice.

The original USB mouse (for the first iMac) was round, so you couldn't orient it in your hand without looking at it constantly.

And it came with a very short cord (because there was a port on the right side of the keyboard to plug it into). But then the laptops got updated with USB ports and they were only on the LEFT side of the case.

For at least a year or two you could not buy an Apple mouse for your Apple PowerBook and use it in your right hand, because the cord was too short to go around the case.

Eventually they shipped a "Pro" mouse with revolutionary elongated shape and longer cord. (...and optical tracking, and what looked like zero buttons, which were pretty neat)

Uhg i totally forgot about their round mouse. Bright colored iMac days!

While I get the feeling you appreciate the, erhm, efficiency with which Apple modified this product, the problem is that Apple is not supposed to be efficient. They don't need to save money on the engineering process because they are not hurting for money. They sell themselves as being a design-forward company that prides itself on making bold, not expedient, choices. To take a shortcut like that shows a lack of respect for the customer to whom they are charging premium prices for these items.

So if they're reusing the shell, they passed the savings on to customers right?

If this were a £10 mouse then this excuse might be valid, but it isn't.

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.

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 :)

AA batteries have also immensely gone down in cost compared to the 1990s.

The only point IMHO to built in battery, is if it very convenient to recharge, which is not the case. I have an HHKB which uses 2 AAA, with rechargeable Li batteries which I can reload with usb, while still using the keyboard with cable (once every 6 months or so)

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

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.

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.

As someone who doesn't give a flying fuck about design this is exactly what bothers me with Apple.

Computers are not fashion or status symbol they are a tool. Although I do have a "ice" motherboard..

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.

That wired hockey puck mouse was an abomination

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.

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.

Cycling the battery continuously is worse for lifespan.

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.

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.

> 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

Ya, you're right. When it worked, it worked well. A point worth remembering, thanks. Alas, they just weren't robust enough, interferring with my work.

"when it worked, it worked" is one of the weakest excuses possible, and one Apple themselves railed against many times. Not working at all (ie: broken) is quite worse than not working beyond perfectly.

Who cares if you can't press a key on the very edge, as long as pressing in the proper spot _always_ works? The one that did accept blatant mis-presses was broken often enough to completely overwhelm any benefits, because it can't accept _any_ presses when it's in for repairs!

"I like the keyboard that let me be a bad typist, even though I had to get it replaced 3 times, and that lack of robustness actually interfered with my work." Are you listening to yourselves?

I liked the gentle amber sleep mode breathing power button on my circa-2000 CRT iMac. It wasn’t nearly as bright as that of later models and was quite nice.

I had one from 2010 and the bright light wasn't even the main problem at night.

The charger emitted an annoying high pitch sound so I'd have to unplug it.

And the device turned itself on randomly at night, and the CD-ROM reader and fans would spin up and make noise.

I've now used a macbook air for work and I noticed that even when in "standby" for a week my router had a DHCP lease for it. So they still turn on for no reason, but at least the lack of fans and the fact that I can now use a decent usbc charger means they don't wake me up any more.

You can disable it but yes macs will periodically wake up to get emails and notifications even while they are ‘sleeping’

You can disable "Wake for Network Access" in the battery settings if you want. It's a convenience option that lets MacOS check for new iMessages and other updates while it's asleep. That way all your messages are loaded immediately when you wake the device.

I didn't even set it up with an apple account and thus I cannot possibly get any messages from iMessages.

Do they have network performance problems such that messages need to be preloaded? Can't just fetch the new ones at wake up? That is a solution in search of a problem. I go from phone to laptop/desktop and continue messaging on various services all the time, and none of them sync until wake up and that's perfectly fine.

I presume apple wants to collect the data.

I love how when americans wake up simple factual statements get downvoted because they are somehow seen as personal insults.

Feel free to downvote, this one is meant for it :)

Yes or the sharp edges on MacBooks cutting into your wrist. That started with the unibody design, the ones before that had a nice soft rounded plastic gasket there

My powerbook was the last apple laptop I really enjoyed.

I got no problem with that tiny LED or glowing apple logo personally

But liquid glass and insane amount of bugs that arrived with it is killing me.

Likely you experienced later gens where they toned it down. ~2010 it was one of the brightest LEDs you could purchase. As in they literally put a torch LED on the all white Intel macbooks of the era and it would shine through the laptop bags, pulsating.

Maybe...

Not Maybe, I owned a 2009 MBP. Everyone with a macbook from that period that I knew had the same issue, they were absurdly bright, you could not keep it anywhere near a bedroom without putting very thick tape over the light.

It was a poorly thought out design of aesthetics over ergonomics.

nope. actually I remember I had that model first and yes I still don't care. simply the least annoying light compared to other bright color leds in a room. doesn't stand close to liquid glass chaos.

loved battery level indicators on old macbooks too, they kind of brought it back with led on magsafe except this new led is more annoying.

There's people who live their lives with the low battery beep on their smoke alarm going off every 5 minutes in their home and don't even register it happening.

I recently had to get printing working for a family member on an Apple tablet. I'm not an Apple jockey so it took me a while to sort out and I've being using computers since 1980 and consulting since 1995.

You tap an icon that looks like the outline of a rectangle with an arrow pointing up. Then you tap the name of the printer. Then you tap another rectangle with an up arrow and then tap the word "Print".

I may have got the precise steps wrong but it really is that abstruse to print something on a tablet. Never mind that mDNS/Bonjour has done its thing - the steps to actually indicate that you want to print is frankly weird.

What on earth is that box with an up arrow actually supposed to mean? Why does the interface switch from icons to text?

Android uses the 'share' icon to represent the same thing, which is maybe a little more legible, but still feels like shoving way too many actions under a confusing modal they shouldn't be in. Even worse when apps implement a custom share dialog.

I usually see the Android share icon with the word share. Apple doesn't often present words with icons, so if you don't already know what the icon means, it's difficult to find out.

Arguably, it's a bit off that you share a document with a printer in order to print it, but I feel like printing is no longer so common as to require a dedicated button everywhere; and printing from a phone still seems like a novelty to me (but I do use it; it feels odd, but useful and I know lots of people have no computer to print from)

It's supposed to be the "Share" menu, but that stopped meaning anything very fast because they just crammed everything into it for lack of other UX for system services.

Macs have the problem multiple times over, because now they have the normal menu bar and toolbar, and a Share menu that just gets arbitrary stuff dumped into by App Store apps, and the Services menu that shows up in some contexts but not others, and the Quick Actions menu that shows up in some contexts but not others, and some services can just add things directly to right click menus.

Apple UI designers wanted to avoid the Android hamburger so much that they doubled-down on the share menu to duplicate hamburger menu functionality.

I guess printing it to paper is a form of sharing so they may have the last laugh.

Windows Explorer supports its own equivalent to the "Share" menu, dubbed "Send To". It was there already in the original Windows 9x. Printers are generally not listed though, there is a separate "Print" option instead.

There's a very reasonable argument behind that, though.

"Sending" a file to another disc or on the network is non-transformative. At the far end, it's still a file.

But "printing" is inherently transformative-- you're expecting to get something clearly not a file (print-to-file pseudo-printers excepted).

I can see the desire for minimalism-- having seperate rows for "share/send" and "print" is, well, two seperate rows. But if you offer adaptable and configurable interfaces, I could see suppressing one or both depending on context or user preferences. (You have no external drives or registered share-recipients? No "Send To/Share")

Obligatory:

https://retrohacker.substack.com/p/bye-cups-printing-with-ne...

Maybe I've been in Linux land too long but sending a file to a printer seems pretty obvious to me. Yes it's transformative in a way, but you could equally argue that my word document with A4 layout is a digital version of a document, and the print out is equivalent.

To me there seems to be more difference between sending and share. One is pushing something somewhere, the other implies making it available for someone/thing to pull.

I'm not particularly saying you're wrong btw. We are talking metaphors, and there's no 'correct' way to do it.

Good point. Its a mess. Come on apple get someone to fix this

It's called the Action icon, a generalisation of its original Share meaning. It's used throughout the Apple ecosystem so knowing that's where actions live is not a big expectation.

You've mangled the steps. You only press one Action icon in this sequence, then you select Print, then you need to select the printer and any other options, then you tap Print. Which of these steps do you think 'abstruse'?

Are you suggesting they should use a little icon of a printer, peripheral that takes many wildly different forms, instead of the word Print?

There's a printer icon in windows and *nix. Many icons represent things that have wildly different forms. People and cars look different, but road signs manage to portray these things.

We've had clear, legible printer icons for decades.

OK so Action.

I may have got the steps wrong but I do recall that the Action icon was again to the left of the Print text that performed the actual print.

Again, why does the UI switch from icons to text arbitrarily? If Action is Action then label it Action and not an icon of a broken rectangle with an up arrow. That means nothing and is abstruse.

I'm an IT consultant and my step mum is not. Neither of us had any idea what the Action icon means. I do now (it's now filed along with burger menu and other UI wankery).

An icon of a printer is at least relatable. That Action thingie isn't.

I like the status lights on my old X200 a lot (on/off, battery, disk, wlan I believe, and more). It's a shame we don't have them like that any longer in Thinkpads. We only get one or two LEDs indicating on/off status. But such things need to be done right.

They're the flagship "design here, build there," company, so they got the Pollock treatment.

I'm glad people are finally saying it. Eat your heart out, Nilay.

Status lights can be helpful, although they should be dim, and should be red or green (or possibly yellow) rather than blue or white (unless you have already used the other colours and now you need more colours).

Red and green, if the color has some meaning, should be avoided. 10% of males have problems with that colors (dyschromatopsia) specially with led colors. For indicators blue and white are very easy to see, even in not optimal lightning. The option to disable them is nice.

> unless you have already used the other colours and now you need more colours

In that case you will end up with Christmas decorations. Better solution is usually placement and form.

Mixing red and green should be avoided. There’s no problem using either alone. Human color vision is the least sensitive to blue light, so a blue indicator led has to be made brighter than an equivalent red or green led to be as visible in bright ambient lighting. But that makes blue leds disastrous in low light, where the opposite is the case (vision is the most sensitive to blue). Of course there never was any reason for blue standby lights except the fact that blue leds had novelty value and looked futuristic compared to boring old red and green leds.