I feel like Apple mice have always been terrible and this was just the latest manifestation of an Apple tradition as old as time. Anyone remember the hockey puck?
I distinctly remember back in college, every computer in the Mac computer lab was connected to a Microsoft optical mouse. Telling.
Mice and keyboards have always been problems Apple has been entirely useless at.
It's because the usefulness of a mouse/keyboard scales exponentially with user facing complexity.
A Logitech MX Master 3 for example is packed with features a user figures out and improves their day to day. Ditto a mechanical keyboard, and generally speaking those work best when the user chooses the particular one they prefer best and learns how to use all the features. Ditto deskmats and all the other desktop paraphernalia that modern desk workers are figuring out is pretty neat.
This is the complete antithesis of everything Apple prides itself on being good at.
Which is a focus on "just plug it in and it works, Apple knows best" technology solutions. Devices which just work when you're using 10% of your brain.
Apple as a company utterly despises user customization in general.
But discrete physical user interfaces like mice and keyboards (unlike trackpads, which operate fine out of the box), is a problem space where user customization greatly improves performance.
Apple did make some really good keyboards between 1987 and 1995, that are now considered classics. The mechanical Alps switches are a bit sensitive to dust over time though. In the enthusiast community in recent years, there have been aftermarket parts - as well as DIY kits for new keyboards that use switches and keycaps scavenged from these keyboards.
One good "it just works" thing that Apple has is that the Magic Mouse 2 and "Magic Keyboard"s [1] do automatic pairing of Bluetooth credentials over USB the first time you plug it into a Mac.
I think that is a pretty elegant way to do out-of-band pairing — which is the most secure type of pairing. But I do wish that the protocol was standardised and not proprietary, so that it would become available for other peripherals and OS:es.
1: The "Magic Keyboard"s are the ones with built-in batteries, not the predecessors not actually branded "Magic".
Absolutely agree with you 100% on the mouse situation, they are, and have always been, horrible. But my favourite keyboard of all time is actually the aluminium chicklet Apple keyboard. It’s just so satisfying to type on to me. Mechanical keys have always had too much travel for my tastes.
The example I had in my mind was "to numpad, or not to numpad."
Apple has an, issue, with keyboard layouts.
Keyboard layouts in general are very variable because of that "numpad" issue, as well as the rarely used keys like the "right click" key to the right of the spacebar (which I absolutely adore).
Many physical keys on your keyboard only make sense if you learn to use them, hence the entire "function keys" debacle of the Macbook Pro. Jetbrains and other software for example just demands extra function keys.
I can totally understand the hardware part. Apple is good at that part, except with their butterfly switches afaik. And I'd love some more polished aluminum at my desk.
I genuinely despise the modern chicklet wireless keyboards they make, but I agree that they've made some good keyboards in the past. The G3 iMac had phenomenal keyboards, arguably one of the best layouts of it's time. It didn't even feel like something Apple would make, it closer resembled an IBM peripheral...
I'll agree that Apple still completely misunderstands what people want from a mouse, but their history with keyboards is a lot less shaky.
The Logitech MX Keys has a bit more travel and a better angle without being a mechanical keyboard. I have the latest Magic Keyboard for the Touch ID, but I really hated giving up the MX Keys. When switching, I can say it's definitely less comfortable to type on.
I remember. A part of the top shell could snap off and be replaced with a third-party shell that gave the mouse a more elongated shape. There were at least two such shells on the market, even.
While you could use any other USB mouse with Mac, MacOS had a mouse acceleration curve that felt odd. One thing special with the Microsoft optical mice is that they came with a driver for MacOS — with its own mouse acceleration code that fixed this issue.
I distinctly remember back in college, every computer in the Mac computer lab was connected to a Microsoft optical mouse. Telling.