OctoMonkey

mdirvin said:

My wife gets multiple versions of this every day.  I very seldom do, I don't know where she goes, or what she does on the internet. She is constantly getting scam e-mails that her Cosco, Sirius, or icloud subscription has lapsed.  We don't even have a Cosco, or Sirius subscription. 

dewme said:

OctoMonkey said:

dewme said:

Yet again a clever proof of concept. He’s basically created a “magic shoe” for the Magic Mouse that allows the mouse to be used while charging. It works. But it’s pretty obvious from the implementation why Apple never chose to go down this path. It’s design and aesthetics are okay from a mouse-in-a-shoe perspective, but Apple (at least with Jony Ive at the helm of the design team) would never have allowed this to be labeled as an Apple product. It’s too large, bulky, and reminiscent of mouse designs you can get from many other vendors for $29.99.

Whether you liked Jony’s approach or not, he always stuck to his guns and saw that his vision for a product met his design and aesthetic goals. Anything that deviated too far from what he envisioned was seen as a failure. One can argue that what comes across as a single-minded and arguably narrow focus on the primary functionality, like using the device and how it feels in the hand, led to functional compromises when it came to ancillary functionality, like charging the device. The Magic Mouse is imo pleasant and efficient to use, but yeah, there is no getting over the clunky recharging scenario. The rationale must have been something like “you obviously only recharge the device while you’re not using it.” This makes perfect sense only until it doesn’t.

Not a mouse in a shoe.  Rather than being inserted into something (like a foot into a shoe), the mouse is pretty clearly separated in half with a center section added, which also encompasses the lower half.

His design philosophy of form over function is the reason I don't care for his designs in general.  He was a good (not great) product designer when kept reined in, but a disaster when let loose.

One thing I still wonder about is why more wireless mouse and trackball designers have not gone after using an inductive charging mechanism. Perhaps it has something to do with the need to periodically park the mouse exactly on top of a charging coil built into the desk, desk pad, or a mouse pad. Perhaps as far-field wireless power transfer technology becomes more mature and widely available it can be used in conjunction with precision UWB localization to allow all of the wireless devices sitting on your desk, or even all wirelessly charged devices in a room, to be charged simply because they are within line-of-sight proximity to the charging station or broadcast beacon. Seems doable in the not too distant future.

AppleZulu said:

OctoMonkey said:

AppleZulu said:

Pancake said:

foregoneconclusion said:

It only takes a few minutes to get 8-9 hours of charge using the port on the bottom. The complaints about the location were always inane. 

100%. It’s never been an issue for me. The BENEFIT of the charging port being in the bottom is nothing ever gets stuck in there. If it was on the back or front you wild over time get dirt, skin and lint stuck in the port. 

What's hilarious to me is that the critics seem to think that the placement of the charging port is either some kind of mistake or a form-over-function decision to not have a visible hole mucking up the sleek design.

The  reality is that the port was put on the bottom of the mouse quite intentionally, because it's a wireless mouse, and Ive didn't want users to leave it plugged in, using it as if it were a wired mouse. The OG Magic Mouse had to be flipped over to swap out the batteries. It doesn't take much longer than that maneuver to get a day's charge on the rechargeable one. 

It's not hard to imagine the next iteration won't have a port at all, and will simply charge via a watch charger and/or an iPhone MagSafe wireless charger. You won't be able to use it while it's charging that way, either. Whatever will people do?

What is hilarious to me is that Ive fanboys seem to thing that the placement of the charging port was to prevent accumulation of debris in the charging port when it was clearly a for over function decision to not have a visible hole mucking up the sleek design.
 
IF, as you assert, "Ive didn't want users to leave it plugged in, using it as if it were a wired mouse" it would have been because that would ruin his perceived aesthetic beauty of the design.  What we end up with is a design which looks horrible and is completely non-functional when charging.

Using it as a wireless mouse is literally its intended function. 

Do you get this worked up about not being able to drive your car while you're filling up the fuel tank? I've got news if you're thinking about driving an EV...

JMStearnsX2 said:

I'm of the opinion that Apple has never made a good mouse. They are always uncomfortable and ergonomically bad, and I feel that the touch stuff on the last few versions is a bad idea. I like to have actual buttons on my mouse, and have them fill my palm/hand. Any "smart" features of the Magic Mouse are available using the keyboard (which I prefer, I must be old...), and I think they are faster on the keyboard anyway.