The Magic Mouse is Apple's best worst product

Mark Gurman's latest subscribers-only newsletter says that Apple's developing an update to the Magic Mouse.

I'm told that Apple's design team has been prototyping versions of the accessory in recent months, aiming to design something that better fits the modern era.

Gurman goes into a few details, which aren't mine to share. But "the charging port won't be on the bottom" is pretty much the free space on that particular bingo card.

People have been regularly expressing the sentiment "OMG they put the Lightning port in the one place that makes it impossible to use the mouse while charging LOL I can't even" practically since the product's introduction fifteen years ago. It's true that the choice to put the charging port there wasn't ideal, but it wasn't wrong, either. The Magic Mouse runs for at least a couple of months on a charge, and you can top up the batteries in under an hour.

Also: if you're so obsessed with maximizing your productivity that you can't afford four to six hours of mouse downtime per year, why the hell are you using a Magic Mouse? Especially when you can find a much better one in the time it takes to Google the phrase "literally any mouse other than Apple's."

No, I don't think too highly of the Magic Mouse. Recently, there was a story going around that the only Apple product that Tim Cook doesn't daily-drive is the Magic Mouse. This turned out to be false. But it was soooooo believable. I'm a man who (1) owns and has used a Magic Mouse, and (2) is somewhat sensible. So I refuse to accept that someone daily-drives one of Satan's Sidecars until I see the security camera footage.

I mean, just look at it. Look at a Magic Mouse next to a Logitech M720 (my personal choice) and tell me which of these two you'd prefer to have underneath your dominant hand all day long. Photos are from Apple and Logitech's respective product pages. Relative sizes are roughly correct:

As with all of Apple's best products, the Magic Mouse solves problems via the use of innovative technologies. But here, Apple's gone and solved problems about mouses that only bother industrial designers. The multitouch surface eliminates all of the mechanical greeblies that create visual clutter and disrupt its smooth lines and shape, leaving the Magic Mouse looking crispy-clean.

Sweet! But Apple's designers intensified all of the problems with mouses that affect actual users. Viz:

• My hand has to adapt to accommodate the Magic Mouse's flat, symmetric shape. And it refuses to hide its resentment about that.
• Because the Magic Mouse's controls are just mathematically-defined zones on a smooth surface, my fingers can't find the right spots all on their own. Thus, I need to maintain a mental map of that featureless feel-scape at all times.
• Worst, I'm always accidentally triggering multitouch events when my fingers fidget on its surface a little bit while I'm thinking or reading the screen. It even happens when I'm just trying to push the thing around my desktop.

The Logitech mouse uses mechanical switches that aren't that much different from the ones inside the mouse that came with the original 1984 Mac. Left button, right button, scrollwheel: each of these is a physical, mechanical thingy that I can navigate solely by feel. It's like there's a subsidiary brain inside my right wrist that can translate my intent. And the mechanical feedback assures me that yes, I definitely right-clicked the hell out of that document icon.

Let's also note the M720's terrific practical features. I can instantly switch between up to three connected devices with a flick of the lower right button. Its extra function buttons are user-configurable and they're located in spots where I won't wind up accidentally triggering Mission Control or something. I can decide whether the rotation of the scroll wheel is Smooth or Chunky.

But the Logitech's biggest advantage, and the Magic Mouse's biggest problem, is obvious. The M720 is in the kind of organic, ergonomic shape that would be left behind after you rested your hand on a ball of Play-Doh for a minute. Looking at the shape of the Magic Mouse, I can only conclude that it was designed for dolphins.

(And I'm not even faulting Apple for that. There are six million dolphins in the world. The number of them that own a mouse is so low that it's almost impossible to track. None of Apple's shareholders would be upset to learn that Apple seized an opportunity to create brand loyalty in a market segment that's been overlooked by its competitors. The Magic Mouse could be one of those gateway products that leads to, say, a future Apple Watch purchase. A dolphin would need to buy four or maybe even five straps to wrap fully around its flipper; consequently, the revenue-per-customer would be amazing.)

(This kind of thing is why Apple's choice to lump products into categories during its quarterly earnings report, instead of breaking out sales figures and consumer data per-device, continues to frustrate the hell out of me. Clarity eludes, you see. One is forced to resort to informed speculation.)

As a static object, though, the Magic Mouse is gorgeous. And that's why I've always thought of it as Apple's best worst product.

Apple – despite all evidence to the contrary – has the ability to design a mouse that's every bit as good as anything Logitech sells. Whether or not they could design one that's materially better is a messier question. And Apple is at least a quarter-century past the point where they had to exploit every potential source of revenue just to avoid becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of Jiffy Lube. They're free to follow their own path here.

What Apple can do better than Logitech and everybody else is design a mouse that's elegant and articulates Apple's design language. I'm sure that every temp worker sitting behind a yellow iMac and a Magic Mouse at a reception desk eyes the Logitech mouses in the office with an envy and a degree avarice that intensifies with each passing day. But hey, first impressions with new clients count. This is where the Magic Mouse shines.

I feel like I've been building towards a conclusion that rips off a line by Douglas Adams:

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”

I gotta admit something: I think I'm rooting for Apple to release a new mouse that's even more bizarre and inexplicable than the Magic Mouse. That's one other thing that Apple can definitely do better than Logitech. ⓘ