Earlier today, 9to5Mac asked their Twitter followers to post their most unpopular Apple takes. Here’s what I said:
“There’s no good way to solve the Magic Mouse charging design issue without severely compromising the design of the product. It’s fine.”
This garnered a lot of attention. So far I’ve gotten far more likes than negative comments (which is encouraging), but all but maybe one of the comments has been negative. I even had to block one person who said that I must be lying so as not to offend my pro-Apple audience. Hogwash.
Negative reactions mostly fell into two categories: People who really hate the charging situation on the Magic Mouse, and people who don’t care for the design.
Let’s address the latter complaint first: If you don’t like the Magic Mouse design, all I can say is that I sympathize and I’m confident that you’ll find an alternative that meets your needs since there’s a vast variety of mouse designs out there. I would also assert that the Magic Mouse is far better than the Mighty Mouse it replaced. The latter product felt cheap and plastic-y, and that scroll ball got gunked up almost from the moment you took it out of the package.
Many people complained about the ergonomics of the Magic Mouse, which is a frequent complaint I’ve heard since the day it was announced. Those people are probably right, but I’ve never found the Magic Mouse uncomfortable to use. Quite the opposite actually. I love the low profile shape of the product, and I absolutely adore the Multi-Touch scrolling.
A couple of people brought up carpal tunnel. I’ve never had that happen due to the Magic Mouse’s design, and I’ve been using it daily since it was released in 2009. I bought it the day it was announced in fact! I suspect that people who play the “carpal tunnel” card either haven’t spent much time with the Magic Mouse or are personally extra susceptible to carpal tunnel themselves.
Then there’s the charging situation. Yes, it’s not good that you have to charge the Magic Mouse via a Lightning port on the bottom of the mouse. The reason this is bad is obvious: you can’t use the mouse while it’s being charged. What’s less obvious is how to solve the problem. Design is, after all, about trade offs. Many people confidently assert that it’s an easy problem to solve, but I think they’re not thinking it through very deeply. Let’s go through the two most frequently suggested solutions:
Wireless charging: Apple could do this, it is asserted, by shipping the Magic Mouse with a mouse pad that provides inductive charging or by some kind of Qi charging station (or even MagSafe). The latter option really isn’t an improvement since it too would render the mouse unusable during charging (and would take longer to charge). The former option is technically feasible. (Logitech sells this exactly, though it retails for $20 more than the Magic Mouse.) Still, I just don’t see Apple shipping a mouse pad. Ever. While it would be infinitely more practical since it would be able to be used while charging, it would arguably be equally inelegant to the status quo.
Wired charging: The other popular suggestion is that Apple could move the wired charging port to the front of the Magic Mouse so that it could be used while charging. This would definitely solve the problem, but I would argue that it would be hard to do in an elegant way. Look at the photo of the Magic Mouse and note the way it rises in the center (so as to fit into your palm), while tapering down almost to the desk surface at either end. You’d have to radically redesign the Magic Mouse with a much thicker front end if you were going to put a charging port there (particularly if you replace the Lightning port with USB-C). This type of solution may ultimately be what Apple does at some point, but to say it would be a trivial thing to change is to admit that you haven’t really given the matter much thought.
Really though, this whole thing is just making a mountain out of a mole hill. I probably only need to charge my Magic Mouse ten times in a given year, and it’s not that much of an inconvenience to do so overnight, or during lunch and use my MacBook Pro’s trackpad while I do it.
Look, Apple’s going to rethink the design of its mouse one of these days. At 14 years with only a change from using AA batteries to using a built-in rechargeable one, it’s got to be one of the longest tenured products in Apple history. But the Magic Mouse is pretty great, and I still love it as much in 2023 as I did in 2009. Honestly probably even more so since having a rechargeable battery is infinitely more useful than burning through AAs.
The only argument I have is the difficulty of not having a landmark to differentiate between right and left click on the mouse surface. It’s way too easy to get disoriented on a perfectly smooth surface and end up with your clicking finger in the middle of the mouse, randomly wondering why you either aren’t getting your right click menu or wondering why you ONLY get your right click menu.