The Bean is here (New "pointing stick" mouse by Ploopy)

blog.ploopy.co

That doesn’t look very usable in the real world.

Sick design though!

I think the nub is in the wrong place. When i was a kid i had this ( https://webassets.lqdt1.com/assets/photos/16167/16167_2131_1... ) mouse from ibm (at the time maker of thinkpads) and that’s a more sensible choice in my opinion.

Interesting. Did that mouse still have a ball on the bottom? Was the nub on top of the mouse a proper trackpoint-style pointer?

I'm the happy owner of a Ploopy Adept[0], which is a similar concept to the Bean, but which uses a trackball instead.

Yeah that mouse had a ball underneath, keep in mind that mouse is from more than twenty years ago!

Things weren’t that fancy back in the day!

The Bean is a high-performance pointing stick, providing a precise and complete cursor experience in a small, convenient package.

NOTE: Despite the lack of wires in any of the photos, this is a wired device.