Apple Pro Mouse | Hacker News Reader

Apple Pro Mouse

minimallyminimal.com

68 pointsDoubleguitars73 comments

An Apple mouse has come with every Mac I've bought. The first thing I do with them is throw them away. Worst mouse ever. Don't care that it is oh so pretty so very precious pretty. While I'm ranting, mice with heavy batteries aggravate carpal tunnel. Lightweight wired mice with a wheel and many buttons for the win. $9 buys a great mouse, a superior mouse that is more ergonomic. Things that harm your wrists are not ergonomic. Ergonomics and usability are not about curves and translucent plastic. And simplicity and elegance is not about having to use a second hand to press a control button on a separate device in order to access the functions of the right mouse button such as contextual menus.

You may not have used an Apple mouse in some time, if you're saying you have to push a keyboard button to right click. Apple mice for many years have had a right click function, but, granted, you did for a long time have to enable it by default.

I'll agree that Apple's mice are a little uncomfortable to use, but the touch features on the Magic Mouse are worth it for me - being able to use expose or switch between desktops with a gesture is very valuable.

Razer Naga, my friend.

If you ever game on your Mac, you soon find out that it is impossible to right click without raising your left click finger first.

I'm only an occasional gamer, but it was enough for me to jettison both magic and mighty mouses after a few days. Shame.

yup, I forked over for the magic mouse and realized I couldn't do 3D graphic work in Blender because of the requirement of multiple button pushing.

I have to agree. It's not ergonomic at all.

Even worse than the Pro Mouse is the "hockey puck" mouse. An ergonomic disaster in every sense.

Personally, my best experiences have been with Logitech mice. The Performance Mouse MX and Marathon Mouse M705 are both great.

> is the "hockey puck" mouse.

I don't disagree that they're terrible, but didn't they end production of those 15 years ago?

I wish I could love Magic Mouse, but it is way too small for my hands. Steve was tall and it is likely he had large hands, but the product had to appeal for the masses. Mouse can't be all for one.

Mighty mouse scroll wheel was amazing and I still lust for it, but today I just use magic trackpad - it's flexibility with gestures and low profile helps with fatigue. However I find repetetive and quick tasks to be done easier with a traditional, ugly and cheap wired mouse.

This. My magic mouse bites me (nips me on the gaps around the edge), gives me proper arm pain and a rash.

Total piece of crap.

Have a 12 year old Microsoft optical USB one that replaced it.

How does a mouse give one a rash?

Alloy has nickel in it. Nickel causes contact dermatitis for a lot of people, me included. My MBP does the same and is coated in vinyl sheet to stop it literally making my hands bleed.

Apple is one if the only vendors that actually doesn't actually consider biology when designing a product. Even the shittiest Lenovo or no brand Chinese clone laptops are made of better materials.

So I use my Lenovo instead and the MBP sits there like a lemon waiting until I can be arsed to clean it out and eBay it.

LOTS of people have this problem. My dermatologist said that he sees 3-5 people a week that have contact allergies on hands and ears that use apple products. I tried to email apple about it - never heard a thing back.

Edit: 2 days of using an MBP without vinyl around it: http://i.imgur.com/HgDquuE.jpg

This is strange. The Macbook Pro is anodized aluminum - shouldn't have nickel in it, but it might have copper/zinc traces, which are also allergenic to some people.

In the words of a great man: you're holding it wrong.

You're not supposed to grip the magic mouse. Hold it with your thumb and ring finger on either side of the apple logo at the bottom, palm wresting on the mouse pad, and use your index and ring fingers for clicking and scrolling.

When you click, your fingers should be in the dead centre of the mouse.

Or just get a magic trackpad.

No other mouse gives me the same trouble. Its the mouse not me.

It's not because I don't know how to use the three sea shells.

So what you're revealing is that somebody can hold the mouse wrong, which means a point of failure of design. the magic mouse is shite and causes wrist / arm pain, basically what people call carpal tunnel, the magic mouse is problematic at best.

Yep! No one believes me that the Magic Mouse pinches my fingers.

Yes. And the Magic Trackpad beats any mouse for any task that is not Photoshop or gaming.

True, the trackpad is a killer once you get the handle of it.

I didn't like mine (and it was a PITA to get it), probably because there is no "resting position" like with a big mouse.

Just rest your hand on it is the best advice i can give. The palm detection works really well.

Well, I never thought of this

I just keep the base of the hand outside the lower part of the trackpad

There's also a trackpad<>keyboard hand movement as well so it doesn't stay there always.

I love my trackpad, but use it in combo with my logitech.

It was a common quip a few years ago to say: "Apple mice have three buttons, just like PC mice. It's just that two of them are on the keyboard".

I recently (Feb 2014) got a MacBook Air, my first Mac. I bought an Apple keyboard, but Apple's mice are so awful I kept my USB PC mouse. I can't live without middle-click.

The ergonomics of every Apple mouse since the puck have been horrible. If I use them for more than a couple of hours, my hand starts cramping up. In the past, I've always just defaulted to a Logitech mouse...cheap, great battery life, feels awesome, gets the job done. Last week, I bought a Wacom tablet and I have to say that a week into it, it's changed my interaction with my computer significantly (positively). I don't see myself going back to a mouse.

I'm a big proponent of using a vertical mouse. Not that cheap (mine was around 50) and not sexy, but useful.

yup, seconding, thirding and fourthing the vertical mice. Got an evoluent at home, cost me quite a bit, and then I got a cheaper yet highly rated lugulake, and the anker ones look good and are rated well.

Evoluent probably will have to come down in price now that there are more competing alternatives. Vertical mice solved my wrist and my coworkers' wrists' problems.

I'm on one from Evoluent as well (but as far as I know they updated it at least once since I got mine).

Wouldn't want to go back.

YES. I've never used an apple mouse that doesn't immediately hurt my wrist.

As far as I can tell, most everyone I know has converged on the Logitech Performance MX as the undisputed (though unfortunately expensive) most ergonomic and functional mouse.

I don't get it. Everyone seems to be commenting saying the mouse is actually crap or not ergonomic. He says that the mouse is not the best, but it led to the creation of better things like the magic mouse. In fact, the article is about so much more than just a mouse.

The ending quote :

"But in terms of visual richness, the Apple Pro Mouse is still in a league of its own. This mouse remains as one of the most magical products I’ve ever seen. And the magic doesn’t just come from its mystifying appearance; it’s magical because it exists. For most products, clarity becomes fogged up with doubt and lack of ambition. They have no opinion, are overly apologetic as they are designed to satisfy too many people. Steve Jobs didn’t believe in this approach. He made the zero button mouse a reality, and in tandem created the most simple, elegant operating system possible. The Apple Pro Mouse wants to exist in the future, where everything is intuitive. It’s so much of an bullish product that it wasn’t till the Magic Mouse that we truly understood what its intentions were. It’s a huge statement but makes no excuses for believing in what’s right. And this truly epitomizes what made Apple so special under Jobs. "

So it's more a commentary on what made / makes Apple great.

I liked this quote as well:

"Regardless of what you may think of the Apple Pro Mouse, I believe that there’s something admirable about its stubbornness. It’s like a masterful chef that’s owned a restaurant for decades and refuses to change their ways (Sukiyabashi Jiro comes to mind). If everyone was that stubborn, society wouldn’t function, but it’s these people with strong beliefs that help the rest of society ground their opinions. When so much of the world produces apologetic, impartial products, we need some stuff that pushes our notions forward. The mice that Apple made were just that."

So I guess, instead of just talking about the mouse we could talk about what the article is actually about: making amazing products that have opinions and don't try to please everyone, having this vision for how things should be and just building that with whats possible! Make things that polarize people. I think there are lots of interesting statements in there, and none of them are about mice hah.

But it isn't a commentary on what makes Apple great. What makes Apple great is fantastic design, where simplicity and elegance are in the service of functionality. Apple mice sacrifice functionality on the altar of simplicity and elegance.

Looking good and working good are not mutually exclusive.

I like the magic mouse, but for day-to-day mousing, I use an original Microsoft Intellimouse Optical.

Another mouse that looks good but doesn't work good is the Microsoft Arc Mouse (the bendy one). Love the design. But after 15-20 minutes I'm getting cramps from it.

The pro mouse may have looked pretty but it was absolutely horrible in terms of functionality. When you're dragging, if you get to the edge of your mouse pad it's really important to be able to pick up the mouse and reposition it without releasing the button. This maneuver is virtually impossible when the entire top case of the mouse is a button.

The worst problem I had was if the front of the mouse brushed up against the cable as I pushed forwards - I'd be unable to click because the cable was underneath.

This sounds like a whiny, first-world problem, but when it happens a few times every day, it quickly gets on your wick.

That's what the little grips on the side are for - you can hold the mouse in the clicked position if you've got your thumb on one of those.

And thus we are right back in the land of unnecessary complexity

I used an Apple Pro Mouse for a while. Using the grips when picking it up just came naturally, as I recall.

The operative word there being "little". The grips are so small that you can only really grip them between the tip of your thumb and the tip of your little finger. Yes, it's obviously possible to perform the reposition maneuver with the pro mouse, but it's a lot easier if you can lift the mouse by grabbing it anywhere along its sides.

The article doesn't mention the fact that most Apple mouse have terrible ergonomics, but it contains a great anecdote on serendipitous design:

>> According to an interview by Cult of Mac with a former Apple ME, Abraham Farag, the Pro Mouse’s design was born unintentionally. During a design review, Steve Jobs was shown six different models of mice to evaluate. But Jobs was instead drawn to a seventh design, an unfinished model with the buttons yet to be built in. Jobs thought the buttonless design was brilliant, and the design team played along, pretending that it was their intention from the beginning. This unfinished design became the foundation of future Apple Mice.

>Apple is a company that doesn’t have a great track record for mice though. Users have always complained about the lack of a right click button and scroll wheel. This was however one of the key drivers for the simplification of Mac OS. Steve Jobs insisted that if the OS should be simple enough to be operated with just one button.

This sounds great in theory but I don't think it works as well in practice. The great thing about a right-click mouse button is contextual menus, aka locality. For anything on your screen, if you want to know everything it can do, just right click on it.

There's no need to refer to a distant top menu bar, which only works when the app/window you're interested in is first focused, which is not something unsavy users easily pick up on. Just right click - it does both for you, focuses the window and provides all relevant functionality. Much simpler and easier for unsavy users to learn and remember.

The fact that Apple had to add a pseudo-right-click functionality in the form of holding Option or Command or whatever while clicking should have been a hint that maybe lack of easy access to a universal context menu is a bug not a feature.

My eyes just really don't see any of the mice in these photos as "beautiful," least of all the Apple Pro Mouse.

These sorts of things are so subjective. Where the author sees an homage to the marbles he played with as a kid, the glare reminds me of a J.J. Abrams lens flare, distracting from the environment rather than blending in.

I went to a school that was Mac heavy and I remember most of my school peeps really disliking the mouse since it made it harder to do things that they already knew how to do on Windows.

Design is great and all, but when you nerf what is/was literally the interface by which you operate a computer, it causes great frustration.

His section about stubbornness didn't resonate with me either. Sounds to me like he's just giving Apple a pass because he likes Apple. That's fine, but we should just be honest about it.

The Apple Desktop Mouse II is an under appreciated looker: http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-ZD603_1003mi_M_...

Great Apple mouse gallery here; http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230372260...

Its amazing how pretty you can make something if you don't need to make it comfortable/functional, High heels, Bras, Sports cars, Watches and chairs.

When there's already plenty of objects that apply to the common user, there really isn't much excitement over doing simple iterations versus creating something for a much smaller audience.

Wow, I was just about to mention how much I missed his podcast, The Wish List, only to discover that it looks like it might be back: They published a show on April 30 after a 16 month hiatus.

If you like discussions on design and related topics, you should check it out.

> Utilizing Apple’s knowledge in capacitive touch sensors used in the iPod, they made a zero button mouse that can sense left and right clicks.

Huh. I always thought the top part had enough flex to allow clicks on either side, but the ifixit teardown shows only one switch (the component marked d2fc-7-h).

http://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/AGSiPJBxVc1RXnMh.hu...

This is a great example of the reality distortion field. Apple produces probably the worst product ever designed - in every way imaginable and there's still people claiming it is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

I'm a huge enthusiast of mouse and other input devices, UIs, and I've tried the Magic Mouse, as well as gaming grade mouse devices like the Logitech G9.

Here's the thing. The Magic Mouse excels at some key areas, but it's vastly inferior in some others. Overall, it ends up being worse for certain types of uses (long term, high performance).

Here's the breakdown of the Magic Mouse for various mousing tasks:

Vertical Scrolling - the Magic Mouse is hands down way better than G9 or any other mouse.

Horizontal Scrolling - Magic Mouse wins here even harder than at vertical scrolling. This is definitely one of its highlights.

Pointer tracking - it's not as good as a gaming grade laser mouse, but it's good enough. This isn't the part that makes people hate it.

Gestures - pretty good, but not as amazing as the Magic Trackpad. Better than normal mouse that have none, but "decent gesture support" is not necessary better than "no gesture support", because it should be great to be usable.

Left clicking - okay.

Right clicking - not so great. You have to physically lift your left finger so it doesn't touch the mouse surface in order to right click. This is okay to do once every 5-10 minutes, but more often than your hand will get tired really fast.

Now, here's the part that absolutely kills the mouse and the main reason why so many people dislike it, IMO.

Switching between various modes - performs really poorly compared to, e.g., Logitech G9 or pretty much any other standard mouse. Here's a worst case benchmark that showcases the weakness here: imagine you need to, in rapid succession, do a left click, right click, scroll a fixed amount, repeat. Try doing that as fast as you can on for 90 seconds on a Magic Mouse. Your hand will be extremely tired, because each of the 3 modes of operation are best performed using different hand positions. On the other hand, with a mouse like G9, your hand position is almost identical for all 3 tasks. So alternating between them is effortless in comparison.

So the bottom-line is: the magic mouse excels at some key areas (which makes some people love it), but fails really hard at some other (less noticeable to the average user) key areas and becomes really tiring to use at high performance for longer periods of time (which makes people hate it).

It's an example of Apple failing to build a "great _all around_" experience that they usually succeed at (see MacBook Pro Retina, iPhone hardware, etc.).

The buried lede here is the confirmation that the Pro mouse was a mistake: Jobs' "form over function" aesthetic gone to absurd extreme.

Much as I like many other things Apple makes, I haven't liked any of their mice and this version is no exception. However, I would perhaps say this one is the least-bad. I liked how clicking was simply pressing down on the whole mouse.

Even though I hate their mice I think their trackpads are great. I have no mice at all anymore.

For the last quarter century or so Apple have known that their peculiar take on the mouse idea does not suit everyone. If you come from a PC or UNIX background then there are conventions regarding how the mouse works - context menu is right click, not some weird keyboard + mouse convention.

People like me have avoided the Apple product for many reasons with the mouse problem high up the list. What I don't understand is why they have offered weirder and weirder mice over the years, all with reliability problems and ergonomic woes, with no option to just get a regular mouse. They could have hooked up with Logitech and made an Apple mouse for PC users, with the buttons in the right place and a novelty fruit logo to make it look desktop-worthy. They could have charged £25 for it and, people that have avoided the Apple cult due to the weird mouse could have been brought on-board.

I know I am not alone in disliking the Apple interface, I am actually the one person that likes Ubuntu Unity, however there are lots of PC users out there that just do a job and haven't the patience/need to learn the Apple mouse oddities. At a presentation or tutorial if the machine is an Apple then the non-Apple people get stuck on basic things like using a web browser or saving a file.

I am a big fan of Steve Krug's 'Don't Make Me Think!' book:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dont-Make-Me-Think-Usability/dp/0321...

The problem with the Apple interface choices is that it does make me think, but not in the right way. I just want to do the task in hand and not wonder why it is that you have to hold down some cryptic key on the keyboard to do a right click.

I also noted in this article how many of the failures of the various Apple mice could be ignored so easily by someone in the Apple cult. Underlying this is a problem with understanding what truly great design actually is.

That really boring Logitech or Microsoft mouse is actually great design. The ergonomics are a treat as is the reliability. They have been bold enough to make something that actually works rather than something that looks pretty.

store.apple.com sells Logitech mice and keyboards. You can just right click with a mouse in OS X, even on an Apple Magic Mouse, though it does need to be enabled in preferences.

The logitech trackman marble wheel is my device of choice. I like the thumbball better than a finger-operated trackball. Sadly the wired version isn't made anymore. thankfully I have 2 and they are bulletproof.

Their latest mouse is pretty good for most work related stuff. I don't really like the way it handles the left mouse button, however the touch scroll wheel is very nice, and once you get the hang of the other gestures you can use, it's a bit like a trackpad that you can actually use to drag things.

I break out the Logitech with two side buttons whenever I want to actually do any gaming though. Terrible mouse for gaming with.

Been using a trackpad for a year. Will never go back.

This article moves towards, but doesn't really get to the fact that mice are, for may intents and purposes, over. Mobile gestures are now expected on the desktop...so trackpads are the state of the art.

How about a trackball?

I'm still a little ticked about Logitech dumping their wired Trackman Wheel Optical. I love the thumb ball instead of a centered ball. I haven't tried the wireless version yet.

I have a M570 (Wireless trackball, thumb ball, as opposed to centered).

I love it. The one thing is that it loses sensitivity when gunk starts to build up - it becomes harder to move the mouse a pixel or two. But that's easily fixed by popping out the ball and cleaning it.

The other issue is that I've had to replace the primary mouse button - the microswitch died.

The M570 is a very well designed mouse. And sturdy. I've used mine heavily for about 4 years without a single issue.

I am shocked and bummed about that. What trackball is available that is operated with pointer / middle finger rather than tiring out one's thumb?

Definitely a severe example of form over function

this article becomes impossible to read to to pretentiousness.

Wow I thought this was a post from 2000 or something

Is this a satire blog or apple worship reached new heights?

It's worship of something, but Andrew Kim isn't an Apple fanboy. If you click the "Archive" button at the top, you can see products and projects from other companies too. From the Lumia 920 extended review: I look forward to mornings because I love the way light hits the surface. Do I have issues? Probably.

Yeah you are right. He worships junk apparently. It is a stupid blog with less content than the apple marketing material which is taken seriously by some certain readership.

Wow, with this amount of love towards the Apple Pro Mouse you would think that it could be inserted.

edit: this site has no sense of humour

The problem is that it's hard to tell humor from this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7862743

Also: Rule 34.

Little gag replies are risky here. Potty humor like what you've done above will never be rewarded. It's too easy. Sometimes clever puns or double entendres will get a couple of upvotes.

This is the correct behavior. Everyone is capable of making little gags, so they add little to the OP. Not a downvoter, btw.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com