Chances are, if you’re on tech Twitter or anywhere else filled with tech pundits, that at some point, you’ve come across someone dunking on the Apple Magic Mouse. Like so many Apple products, its design is iconic yet its function is controversial. The complaint is perhaps best summed up in a single tweet by the wonderful Carolina Milanesi,
and at first glance, I get it. “What a moronic design! I can’t even use the damn thing while it’s charging!” This begs the questionâwhy would Apple, a company known for putting thought into designing the inside and outside of a product just “shove” the Lightning charging mechanism on the bottom of the Magic Mouse and therefore render it unusable while charging?
Was it the hubris of Jony Ive? Sacrificing everything in pursuit of the sleekest design possible? That seems like such a comically surface level answer that, by nature, must be wrong, and I believe it is. Instead, the answer lies in the question, or at least in the complaintâyou cannot use the Apple Magic Mouse, a device that is meant to move around and be free during use, while it’s charging. The same isn’t true for the Apple Magic Trackpad and Magic Keyboard. Both devices are afforded the ability to be tethered to a Lightning cable and sit on your desk for full use while charging away.
Again, did you catch the complaint against the Magic Mouse and the praise for the Magic Trackpad and Keyboard?
One thing that Apple does better than anybody is take away what we think is core technology in order to push industries forward. In just the last two decades, long before anyone else, Apple took away the ethernet port to dramatically increase the adoption of Wi-Fi and got rid of CDs to usher in the era of the modern App Store. When Apple removed these starting with MacBook Air, they were called “user hostile.” In both instances, Apple was ridiculed until everyone followed.
The same is true on mobileâ”An iPhone with no audio jack? How will I plug in my headphones?” cried the pundits. A handful of years later, the world seems to not only have survived this “tragedy,” but in fact thrived as the adoption of wireless earbuds and countless other accessories increased. From the company’s inception, Apple products, through design, have challenged our usage and pushed industries forward which brings us back to the Magic Mouse and its brilliance.
In his review of the new colorful iMac lineup with matching Magic Mouse colors, Ben Sin at XDA wrote:
However, Apple kept the much-mocked decision to place the Lightning charging port at the bottom of the mouse, which means you canât charge the mouse and use it at the same time. This is among one of the worst Apple designs ever.
What if the Magic Mouse’s lack of foresight into real-world usage with its inability to be plugged in while in use was not a sacrifice of form over function? Instead, what if that design choice was intentional? This begs the questionâwhat did Apple hope to achieve or change within us when they made that design decision?
As I alluded to before, the answer lies in the complaintâthe inability to use the Magic Mouse while plugged in. Like most modern devices, the Apple Mouse charges ridiculously fast. A mere 3 minutes of plugin time will gain you a full day’s charge while 2-3 hours will give you a few weeks’ worth. As a daily user of the Magic Mouse, I typically charge mine once a month and have never found myself in a situation that I’ve been out of charge, let alone out of charge and without a few minutes to spare.
The reality is that the Magic Mouse charging mechanism, short of having infinite battery, is more than adequate for the most “hardcore” of users. So why afford the Magic Trackpad and Magic Keyboard the ability to remain plugged in (which I don’t recommend, merely for the beauty of one less cable on your desk) and not the Magic Mouse? Habits and function.
Ask yourself this question and answer honestlyâdo you know anyone, yourself included, that once low on charge would plug in this mouse and not remove it from its tether? Chances are, whether it’s you, your parents, or your boss, that you know at least one person or more. If Apple truly is marching towards a wireless future, free of cables, then the ability to leave your mouse plugged in goes against that very nature. Now you might say that the same is true for the Magic Trackpad and Keyboard, and you’re not wrong.
The difference between them is the freedom a mouse requires.
Once upon a time, as an instructor at Apple, I often was tasked with teaching an older generation the basics of mouse useâwhen to click, double click, CTRL-click, drag items, and so on, and you know what was the most common feedback I received? How do you (and not just me, but our generation which grew up on computers) so easily move the cursor from side to side? How do we precision click on the smallest buttons and manipulate the biggest things? The answer, while perhaps not satisfactory to them, was that the mouse becomes an extension of us. Just as I don’t think about the action of picking up a fork when I want to eat, I don’t think about my mouse movements either. I just do.
Unlike a trackpad or keyboard that remain stationary, like a pencil, a mouse requires freedom. To move from place to place without obstruction. Apple, a company founded on the intersection of technology and liberal arts, gets this more than anyone and through intentional design is attempting to untether us from the (literal) bonds and cables that connect us to our digital products while at the same time giving us freedom to create as we wish.
The Magic Mouse, an unlikely device, perhaps better than most other Apple products, embodies this mission. For many, this is an invisible shift in their behaviorâa natural progression towards our wireless future, that like nearly every other device we own, requires some charging downtime. For others, each time they encounter the friction and inability to use the Magic Mouse while plugged in, though equally subconscious, I believe chips away at their behavior of plugging in a device that, if they were afforded the ability to do so, would regress and keep their mouse plugged in.
So often, when we think about design, the first thing that comes to mind is looks, and we forget the more important part: function. I believe that, yes, the Apple Magic Mouse is a gorgeous piece of design, but that underneath its design is deliberate intent that aims to change our relationship with it and therefore how it functions.