I have a theory about Apple. Like all good Apple theories it superficially fits the facts, is an entertaining mental exercise but is probably wrong.
Apple does not believe in mice.
For a company that excels at hardware design, the mice they’ve released since the return of Steve Jobs stick out in their catalogue like sore thumbs.
The hockey puck mouse from the original iMac was clunky and uncomfortable. The Pro Mouse was smooth and comfortable if bare-bones and uninspiring, but every first-time user had to have the “it’s all one button” design explained to them. Every feature of the Mighty Mouse (accidental-squeeze-buttons, gungy trackball, easily confused click-surface) was broken. The Magic Mouse felt like a promising tech demo that escaped the lab too early. And now Apple have released a multi-touch trackpad.
I’m sure I’m not alone in that the first thing I do when I buy a new desktop Mac is replace the mouse, although my current choice in pointing device may not be everyone’s cup of tea.
My theory is that someone high up in Apple’s hardware design pecking order, maybe Jobs, maybe Ive, maybe their whole hardware brains trust, does not believe in the mouse. Sure it works, but it’s not the right way to solve the problem of manipulating things on-screen. It’s indirect and unintuitive. It tends to sprout more and more buttons. It’s just... wrong!
You could hear it in Jobs’ voice when he introduced the iPad, extolling the joys of having the web “at your fingertips”. There’s no place in Apple's world view for clumsy intermediaries like mice or styluses. There must be a better way! But for the life of them, these visionaries, designers and engineers can’t work out what that better way is for your desktop PC.
Typically when Apple find themselves in this situation, they sit on the problem until they have a solution. That’s why we waited so long for the iPhone and iPad and why we were so blown away when they were finally released. With pointing devices, they don’t have the luxury of procrastination.
You can’t make a great product if you don't believe in it, but you can’t sell a computer without a mouse.
my current preferred mouse is, as it has been for at least the last 7 years, a logitech "marble mouse" http://www.logitech.com/en-hk/mice-pointers/trackballs/devices/156 , which is a hybrid between a trackball and a mouse.
the added bonus is that everyone else hates using them, and therefore they leave my computer alone. :-)
I hate apple's mouses with a blinding passion. in fact, I hate everything about the mac. it all seems so counter-intuitive. give me a pc running some variant of windoze, and I'm fine. I'll figure out what I need to do and do it. But put a mac in front of me and I turn into a drooling idiot.
My mouse of choice for the six years before the Naga was a nice and solid six-button Logitech. I tried using a trackball for a while when I was stuck on a very mouse-unfriendly desk but I just couldn't get used to it. I could get in the general vicinity of a target but I couldn't make that muscle-memory leap to do fine-grained targeting.
As for the rest, if it's any consolation I feel exactly the same whenever I'm forced to use Windows.
Just curious Charles, what precisely about the Magic Mouse feels immature? While I agree with your assessment of all of the other mice, the Magic Mouse is the most pleasant I've ever used (although I don't use it for gaming)
The Magic Mouse feels a bit too gimmicky."Yo Dawg, I heard you like trackpads so I put a trackpad on your mouse so you can track while you mouse."
I like using it, but the multi-touch stuff just isn't quite compelling enough to justify its existence.
The marble mouse is less like a trackball, and more like a mouse. I use it for pixel-by-pixel editing of images - you can't get much more precise than that :-)
I also use it for gaming. Unreal tournament (when my monitor and windows 7 aren't being a bitch) I can turn on a dime, faster and with more precision than any mouse user.
The original reason I bought it was for carpal tunnel relief - using the marble mouse, I have very little problem with carpal tunnel, using a regular mouse I have to use larger gestures, and the pain comes back almost straight away. Using the marble mouse, the smallest movement of my index and second finger allow me to move the cursor more precisely. It also takes up less desk realestate because the base never moves. Just the ball. No mouse pad, no nothing. I even have a second one to go with the laptop. I can put the mouse down beside me on the couch and still retain full control.
Christopher Owen - I have a couple of magic mice and it does feel "raw". No matter how much I use it, I can't get any kind of tight, precise feeling when scrolling (can't think of a better way to put it). Sometimes I'll get just a few lines, sometimes it will go all the way down the screen. Also, when enabling right clicking it feel very unnatural to hold your left finger physically above the mouse to register it is a right click rather than resting it on like a normal mouse.
As to mine, Microsoft Intellimouse Optical. Five-button, symmetrical design.
Hey Charles, It's not just Jobs, I hate mice too! As someone who as RSI in both hands (too much gaming) I use a laptop mostly because I find the keyboard + trackpad very easy (and painless!) to use.
I've tried various combinations of keyboards, keyboards with trackpads, tablets etc and haven't found anything as good to use as my Macbook Pro keyboard and trackpad. Though a good keyboard without too much travel and the Wacom bamboo tablet comes close.
I'm going to give the new trackpad a go and see if it's an improvement over the MBP.
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I can't tell if I'm behind the times, you're massively prescient, or your post was in reaction to this, but the timing of your post and the release of http://www.apple.com/magictrackpad/ is great.
Once upon a time, it was Steve Jobs who loved the mouse and Jef Raskin who loathed the little thing. I've not heard definitively who brought the mouse to the Lisa and Macintosh projects – Steve toured Xerox PARC and many of the subsequent Mac team members were PARC émigrés – but Steve played it big by 1984 at the Mac's introduction, and it was indeed the little computer's tour de force. Raskin, meanwhile, went to Canon and launched the forgotten Cat.
The iPhone and now iPad are, just as Adam Lisagor said, all about stripping away another level of indirection. The Mac got us out of mode after mode of clunky text, putting our files and apps within reach; albeit by that strange little box without any self-evident purpose on your desk. iOS goes beyond that, as many have tried through the years, successfully at last. It took more than trading in the mouse for a touch – as stylus users and Windows Mobile sufferers will agree – it took a fundamental rethink and redesign of the graphical interface behind the touchscreen too.
Magic Mouse and Track Pad are interesting little detours while Apple integrates touch in the Mac. But they are only that. You're absolutely right that the mouse has fallen out of Steve's favour after all these years. No surprise, as none would have thought we'd be here a full quarter century later stuck with a stagnant metaphor of indirection. Just, as all Mac aficionados are well aware, Apple's focussed squarely on iOS right now – and rightly so as the market is vast and untapped – while the task of reinventing the desktop is deep and complex. We might be fooling around with trackpad-mice for a long time yet.