It's probably less to do with the awkwardly placed charging port that you use maybe once a month, and more to do with the ergonomics being dogshit every time you use it.
Something like the MX Master is a lot better but a vertical mouse is better still if your wrists have seen better days.
e.g. https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/mice/lift-vertical-e... or https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/mice/mx-vertical-erg...
I’ve used the Magic Mouse since its creation till earlier this year. I switched to a vertical mouse. It was hard to give up the Magic Mouse’s amazing scrolling experience and its touch surface but my wrist just couldn’t take it anymore.
So Logitech have left and right handed mice but all are same size. How does that make sense?
They do make different sizes, the MX Vertical is bigger than the Lift. Unfortunately there isn't a left handed version of the MX Vertical though.
More like once every 3-6 months, so a total non-issue except for the social media. Ergo isn't great but the multitouch gestures are dope though.
That's not what Apple officially states: https://support.apple.com/en-us/111885#:~:text=The%20recharg....
Ergonomics become more important as you age. I'm afraid all the multitouch gestures in the world won't fix RSI, especially not a Type 2 like Carpal Tunnel. Can't speak for you, but using my computer comfortably is a critical part of my job.
The thing is, a company that likes to sell itself as having stellar product design should be held to a standard of criticism for stellar product design.
And contrary to popular opinion good design is both usable and looks good, many just skip to the looks good part and call it a day. When do users notice their mouse is empty? When they want to use it. Charging preventing use in thst case is just bad design.
You get notifications to charge the mouse before the charge runs out.
> the multitouch gestures are dope though
Agreed – in the sense that you'll need strong analgesics when consistently using them.
To make it even less of an issue, I'm sure Tim Cook enough money to just buy two of them and keep the other one charging at all times. What I don't know, is if Tim Cook is one of those people that needs to have things plugged in all the time even if they don't need to.
The psychological aspect that's not discussed about the mouse port on the bottom is that some people get anxious about a battery running down. So even if it's a once a month, and just do it when it tells you to and take a 15 minute break, the problem with the port on the bottom is that there's a battery that will eventually run out and psychologically, not being able to charge it while using it just feels wrong, no matter how much that's not a real problem. It's an emotion and marketing is all about playing on people's emotions. BMW doesn't sell a car with a V10 that makes 577 horsepower, they sell the ultimate driving machine. Apple knows this better than most consumer products companies so it's just weird for them to stick to their butterfly keyboards, er, guns like that.
I'm not sure I'm following, you're saying Apple should cater their Bluetooth wireless mouse to people who are too anxious about batteries to use it wirelessly?
You realise this is extremely dependent on the individual's use right? I was provided such a mouse at my workplace and had to charge it every month. The first time i forgot to charge it overnight i cursed myself. The second time, I demanded another mouse.
This is apparently a misattribution: https://www.macrumors.com/2024/11/17/tim-cook-didnt-say-that...
> The Wall Street Journal last month published an interview with Cook, in which he said he uses every Apple product every day. Soon after, The Verge's Wes Davis attempted to replicate using every Apple product in a single day. During that day, Davis said he mostly used the MX Master 3, but sometimes switched to a Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad.
> In other words, it was Davis who said he himself used a Logitech mouse, not Cook.
According to the MacRumors article, the misattribution came from The Mac Observer misreading an article by The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/22/24276142/tim-cook-wsj-in...
The author was attempting to interpret what a day with only Apple products would be like, written in a first person style.
They mentioned using a Logitech mouse but for someone skimming the article, it can be easy to misinterpret that as a pull quote from the mentioned WSJ interview
This needs to be the top comment
+1 to Cook’s choice of the MX Master series. I switched to that family of mice back when RSI first started showing up in high school / early college. It has been consistently fantastic for the past .. err .. 18 years.
Whenever I kill one of these, I just buy the new latest version. Think I’m on mouse 5 or 6. At times I’ve had multiple – one for office, one for home.
Can anyone actually confirm what is claimed in this article: That in a recent interview in The Wall Street Journal Cook says he uses the Logitech MX Master 3.
In the interview with the Wall Street Journal [1] there's no mention of a Logitech mouse. The Verge has a seemingly satirical response [2] which contains: "I use an old iMac G4 as a third monitor just because. I mostly use a Logitech MX Master 3 but sometimes switch to a Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad for funsies." which is attributed to the Verge author but not Cook. Nevertheless this is what is attributed to Cook in the parent article.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/style/tim-cook-interview-apple-intellige... [2] https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/22/24276142/tim-cook-wsj-in...
This article of course starts with yipping about the charging port position because it sells to the low-info crowd. I am confident that the charging port has positively nothing to do with Cook's selection (and kudos to him and the org for being willing to admit something like this).
The Magic Mouse is a great general purpose mouse. Browsing websites, reading News, even coding where the mouse is kind of ancillary, with the gestures being a great affordance.
It is, however, terrible if you're doing pixel precise work: For that I use a standard gaming mouse where I have extra buttons mapped to things like control center. With the Magic Mouse you're just constantly accidentally doing gestures and doing micro movements. Not sure why that is, but I find it useless for precise usage, at least in my experience. And FWIW, it's also horrendous in Remote Desktop sessions.
And I imagine that for some hand sizes and health conditions it's a bad match. I have small hands and find it super ergonomic, but I imagine larger hands might not finding it ideal.
I'm pretty critical of my tech's ability to fulfill me exact needs, and the Magic Mouse is fine 98% of the time. The remaining 2% are when I want to play a video game that leverages multiple mouse buttons and a discrete scroll.
Anyone who's played more than five minutes of Unreal Tournament knows full well how essential it is to have distinct physical inputs for primary and secondary fire.
And some of the more outside-the-box RTS input schemes expect me to left-click while holding down the right mouse button.
It may seem like the default Mac mouse is a decades-old grudge against the context menu. But I can understand Apple's motivation in the 80s— ideally, mice shouldn't require more than one button, and if it isn't required, why put the secondary one on a default mouse to begin with?— and in the 90s— when Apple's mere existence became a pure act of defiance. But nowadays, the message they send is, "We're big and successful enough to never have to compromise our the most fundamental ingredient, and if you want more, buy an alternative".
I just bought a Mac Mini for use as a family computer, and a Magic Mouse to go along with it. Why? Because for a computer sitting out in the open in my living room, aesthetics are actually important to me. It’s also being used by people with different hand sizes, and my MX Master is too big for my kids’ hands. And finally, it’s easier to clean than a mouse made with softer materials and lots of different crevices for wheels and buttons.
I’ll also add that horizontal scrolling works really well on the Magic Mouse - comparable to a track pad. My MX Master has a horizontal scrolling wheel, but it is much harder to use due to its design and placement. This may or may not be a big deal depending on which apps you regularly use.
I think for a mouse that you plan to use all day long for work, it’s worth getting something with better ergonomics. But for most people, the Magic Mouse is fine.
I'm super curious if anyone else is more offended that the MX Master still uses Bluetooth when it's plugged in, more than the Magic Mouse charging port location?
I use the Magic Mouse because of the gestures and, from my research, the tracking superior to the MX Master (when the dongle is not in use, with the dongle they're equivalent), I've never once cared about the charging port location, and prefer the honesty of the design placing the charging port at the bottom (e.g., having a mouse usable with an attached cable but still use Bluetooth, instead of a wired connection, is dishonest). I think I'd probably buy an MX Master's to compare it if they'd put the charging port on the bottom (although not 100% sure, needing a dongle to achieve comparable tracking is also a borderline deal breaker).
I'd love to know the inside story about why this hasn't been fixed yet, after so many years of a clearly deficient design. Wasn't there an Apple mouse at one point that did have a connector at the head of the mouse, so you could just use it as a wired mouse while charging? I vaguely recall the charging port on the bottom was blamed on Jony Ive (no idea if that's reasonable) wanting a certain aesthetic, but IIRC the small port on the head of the mouse was hardly noticeable. It wasn't as intrusive as, say, the iPhone notch, which has to be looked at whenever you use the phone.
I'm reminded of the situation where General Motors kept thin, uncomfortable metal keys decades after other manufactures released more ergonomic keys, or even remote key fobs.
It doesn’t need a fix, the thing goes weeks between charges and you can charge enough for several hours of use in like 10 minutes, from a totally dead battery. It’s a little silly but not an actual problem. There are a bunch of other reasons to prefer a different mouse, mostly having to do with ergonomic preferences or needs for real buttons and a physical scroll wheel (it’s a terrible mouse for gaming, for instance).
I think it does. I've been interrupted more than once mid-flow while programming to recharge the battery. Or say, you're in the middle of a presentation. There are lots of mission-critical uses, which can't easily tolerate an interruption. You can't stop to recharge, and it's silly to compulsively check the battery, or carry multiple mice to avoid that situation.
When the system was new, there was a reasonable warning ahead of time on the battery level, but now the warning is not sufficient for a work around, and the mouse much be charged within a minute or two.
The port location is not the reason Cook isn’t using it. The article just made a guess.
Port location is a non issue.
The Magic Mouse just sucks in general. It’s a terrible mouse. Poor ergonomic. No real right click. No physical scroll wheel.
They went way too fancy with the design. I’m guessing it was a Jonny Ive design.
Trying the MX master 2 in a random Japanese computer store was what finally made me realise that my prefence for the Microsoft Intellimouse wasn't big or clever, and that mice genuinely have improved in the last twenty years. I'm not surprised to find Apple fans would use it.
I too have a logitech MX master 3S mouse and it's fantastic across Windows, Linux and Mac.
The only downside of it, is that it needs a larger battery for the price. I think you can hack it and put a larger one in there if you like, but still, the thing costs $99 which is kind of a lot for a mouse.
Does this mouse forego the rubber finish which invariably goes icky after a few years?
Every non-bottom of the range Logitech mouse I've ever had has suffered this problem. After a few years the "rubber" parts of the exterior of the mouse just become icky, like they gradually absorb your body oils and slowly dissolve. I'd be much happier if they just had hard plastic, like the bottom of the range. In fact, on my longest used Logitech (dual optical from early 2000s), I eventually ripped off the rubber and it was great to use for years after until eventually the mouse wheel packed up.
Subsequently my recent mice have been the $5 M90 which doesn't have any rubber finish. I don't suffer any kind RSI so far (despite being over 40 now), but from an ergonomics perspective I wouldn't mind something better.
That's because "soft touch" finishes are usually basically incompletely polymerized plastic painted on the body instead of more premium materials like rubber or silicone, and yes, they will break down over time. You can fix it using isopropyl alcohol and a scotch-brite or similar sponge to scrape it off, but better not to have it in the first place.
The first MX Master I got sometime in 16 lasted almost 6-7 years. I don’t mind spending that if my hand will be ergonomically stable for long term use. I recently upgraded to the new MX Master 3? And even got myself the Mx keyboard. Loving it!
The first MX Master 3S I had lasted a bit over 3 years. The battery would be constantly needing to be refreshed about once a week. It kinda got annoying.
I still have it with the intentions of hacking it and replacing the battery for a secondary mouse for use in the garage, but ... I'm trying to get other things done first.
I did that with a 1; it's not nearly as bad or hard as it seems. And you can upgrade the battery life significantly if you wish.
Larger battery? Why? I already don't remember when I last charged it, plus I can charge it while using it anyway.
I have been replacing most of my hardware with Apple products recently. In an effort to empathize with regular users who don’t buy a laptop to run Linux and all that.
One thing I am surprised doesn’t exist is a non Magic Mouse, with Apple branding. There is absolutely no way the average person sees the Magic Mouse and feels compelled by the gestures. It seems like a missed opportunity not to have Logitech 903 Apple Edition and make it an Apple Store exclusive.
People are just using it wrong, it’s the only good mouse for macOS. The memes and the hate is baseless, you are not supposed to lay your hand over the mouse but move it around by gently holding by the sides and utilize the touch surfaces for Mac gestures with your fingers. Then you can just rest your hands on the table, which makes it very ergonomic.
My guess is that Tim Cook can’t use it the right way because he is likely using a lot of Microsoft Excel, which is made for the Windows UI paradigm.
People are using it wrong, by trying to do normal things with it?
What UI paradigm shift does Numbers have that makes it well suited for the Magic Mouse?
I don’t know if Number is utilizing the Mac gestures, if not it’s on them.
However the entire macOS UI is heavily using swipe gestures, which is only possible with touch surfaces. That’s also why touchpads work great on Mac.
I can’t use anything other than Safari and Touchpad or Magic Mouse because I too often use the swipe slightly back to reveal the previous page to check something that I need on the current page.
If my Magic Mouse breaks down, I’m immediately getting a new one.
> People are just using it wrong
Oh. I broke my arm 5 years ago. I use everything "wrong" now. I have no other choice.
I've come to absolutely hate products and designers that can't grok this basic fact of life.
It might be more productive if you went into how you think people are using it incorrectly, ie. how you view it is "supposed" to be used in macOS.
The ideal way to use the Magic Mouse is to heavily rely on keyboard navigation
Best viewed from such a distance it dwindles to a point?
All the complaints I’ve seen are from people laying their entire hands on the mouse and expecting to rest their hands on top of it. This is the wrong way, IMHO.
I added a bit more detail to the original comment.
Thanks for the explanation! I haven't seen someone use a mouse like that before, very interesting.
> Then you can just rest your hands on the table, which makes it very ergonomic.
Having your hands flat on the table is the opposite of ergonomic, that's how you end up with carpal tunnel.
Proper ergonomic input devices try to keep your hands rotated at least 45-degrees-ish from the surface.
See, you’re rest your hands on the table with the outer edge of your pals and wrists touching the table. You hold it with your pinky/ring finger and the thumb and use the middle and index fingers for the click and the gestures when needed. It’s quite comfortable, your hands stay at the same position with those ergonomic Logitech mice.
The MX Master mentioned in the OP is only kinda-ergonomic, this is what fully ergonomic looks like:
https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/mice/mx-vertical-erg...
Likewise with ergonomic keyboards which usually tilt upwards in the middle so your wrists aren't flat:
That’s exactly how my hands rest on the table most of the times when I’m using the Magic Mouse.
I would love a video of this because I can’t figure out what you’re talking about and I’d love to give the Magic Mouse another chance.
At that point just use the magic trackpad.
Ah yes, the classic Apple, "there's nothing wrong with the product, you're just holding it wrong".
Even if that is actually true, Apple's inability educate users in how to use the device properly is a failure all of its own.
Classic Apple cope.
[dead]
Title:
> Apple’s mouse is so bad
Article:
> Lists how good competitor's mouse is and in the end it has nothing to do with Apple's mouse
Who even writes this clickbait junk?
I tried repeatedly to use a "magic mouse" for work. I think if your UI only needs one mouse button and an occasionally inconsistent mouse wheel, you'd be fine. It has a long battery life, a not bad weight and works consistently in just web browsers.
Given that none of that has anything to do with my workflow usually, I don't use one anymore.
> if your UI only needs one mouse button
Have you tried adjusting the Mouse settings? You can certainly enable right-click.
The multitouch gestures + inertial scrolling is actually quite magical compared to a dumb fixed-offset scrollwheel, but the mouse itself is not the most ergonomic.
Scrolling up and down works ok, but anything else feels like a fast track to RSI to me, especially any sideways scrolling movements.
I‘m on the Trackpad and MX Master combo since a decade and I love it. Use the mouse button for instant screenshots and you are max productive.
I'm sorry why would you buy a product that the creators don't want? This is like the zoom RTO.
I like the mouse. I have the lightning charger version. But personally I prefer the trackpad, external or built-in.
I wonder did Tim install the Logitech spyware?
the magic mouse manages to suck worse than the trackpad in every possible way
This reads a bit like a guerrilla marketing effort by Logitech.
MM could be better in many ways but for me touch scrolling is non-negotiable. It's a must-have feature I haven't seen in any other mouse.
I feel like it almost doesn't matter what mouse you use with macOS, if you also use a high end mouse on a Windows machine with pointer precision off or a Linux machine, they all feel off. Even with their acceleration off.
I pretty much exclusively use the Magic Trackpad if I dock my MacBook.
No shit, that mouse is far superior.
Jesus, they bring up the stupid non-problem of the port location like that’s a reason not to use it.
No, it’s because it’s very low-profile and some people will find that uncomfortable for long-term use.
Agreed. The author assumes it’s the charging port, which just doesn’t matter. It gets a lot of media attention but it just doesn’t matter.
The problem with the Magic Mouse is the extremely poor ergonomic, no real right click, and no physical scroll wheel.
>Jesus, they bring up the stupid non-problem of the port location like that’s a reason not to use it.
It has been a huge problem for me all the bloody time.
Especially combined with the useless "battery low" prompts to recharge, which come at incovenient times (where you need to ignore them and continue working), and always too close to the damn thing running out of juice...
Wow, what a clickbaity title. The article just states that Tim Cook prefers a different mouse than Apples's own Magic Mouse. Now that might be because he finds the Magic Mouse bad. Or just that he prefers the one he is using instead for whatever reason. Actually the article even mentions he sometimes uses the Magic Mouse, so it can't be all that bad in his estimation?
Granted, some people love to hate on the Magic Mouse. Perhaps it is bad (I also prefer different mice). I am happy to discuss it. But does it really have to be framed like that? This makes me want to skip over anything that site produces, I just can't take it serious.
>Or just that he prefers the one he is using instead for whatever reason.
Well, that means he finds the Apple one worse "for whatever reason".
He doesn't need to find it objectively bad (though one could, as well) for this to be a concern.
It's enough of an issue that he doesn't have enough fondness, faith, and pride in it to use it, or enough resolve to get his company to improve it.
Worse, yes. But the title reads "so bad". I don't know if it's "so bad" and shit like that. I use a Logitech G502 wireless personally because I like the way it fits my hand. I've owned all sorts of others like the Madcatz RAT that I've liked or simpler ones that I haven't. That doesn't mean I think the MX Master is "so bad" I'd rather use the G502. Bunch of people all losing their minds over simple shit haha. Oh no, his Apple T-shirt is so bad he's wearing a Zegna shirt! It's a Sunday, my dudes.
Would Steve Jobs have made a product that he didn't personally like?
The Magic Mouse first shipped while Steve was CEO. Presumably he did like it.
Who made the puck mouse?
>Tim Cook prefers a different mouse than Apples's own Magic Mouse.
>But does it really have to be framed like that?
Eating your own dog food is a very important metric of product quality.
Mice are very hand and task specific. It's why we have a market full of significantly different mice with different features, sizes and forms.
Apple sells one mouse so it is impossible they could serve all users optimally. Maybe they should sell other styles of mice, but it is a pretty saturated market covered by a lot of low margin players.