I always thought that the Magic Mouse was really the ideal technology for interacting with a Mac--just too bad that it's so unergonomic. I can't prove it, but I blame a decade of Magic Mouse use for my very painful RSI, which I now have the pleasure of experiencing using any mouse at all.
Apple's input devices are beautiful, but they totally blow comfort. It's as if their industrial designers are all in their early 20s and have never experienced joint pain.
I suspect you’re right. I very much enjoyed the Magic Mouse but had similar issues with wrist discomfort. The neutral position of the human wrist is vertical - thumb pointing up as if shaking hands with someone. The Magic Mouse is so low-profile that it forces the wrist into an almost 90deg rotation. Ergonomically, it’s highly problematic.
The solution for me was to switch to a vertical mouse (well, almost) that allows the wrist to remain neutral. Because I missed the gestures I added a Magic Trackpad on the left side of my keyboard. Of course this suffers from the same ergonomic problem but I only reach for it sporadically so the impact is minimal.
My 2 cents: I had rsi, then I started bouldering. At first I got more pain. The original rsi, but also the 'forearm pump'. But then after maybe half a year the pain dissappeared. Not just the new pain, but the old pain as well.
A lot of “injuries” we have can be fixed with exercise.
This is why a lot of what PT’s do is teach you simple exercises to work ALL of your muscles, including those that might not get activated in our day to day existence, leading to problems.
It's like the body reaches a false equilibrium in which the injury doesn't heal completely unless you "knock it out" of the equilibrium again.
From personal experience: if you have mild pain from past injury/strain, don't give up on trying to fix it. Move a lot, improve your muscle strength and try to stimulate circulation. Be careful not to repeat the injury, but don't avoid the pain altogether (eg. by reducing the amount of movement). It's possible that the pain will improve or disappear, even if your injury didn't heal by itself for years.
(Oh, and go see a physiotherapist a couple of times if you haven't already.)
Me too posts are frowned upon on HN, but vote counts are hidden so I'll say for others: me too. I developed RSI as a teen from spending too much time at a desk with bad posture and have dealt with flare-ups into my adulthood. They were miserable and some days I had to take off work. Once I started bouldering, it went away within months. It's probably the forced blood flow in the area, but whatever it was helped tremendously. I can still hurt my wrist if I type in a terrible position, but it only hurts a bit and doesn't turn into the sustained RSI I had.
Building strength seems to help with all sorts of pain issues. I once banged up my arm pretty good in a fall; what helped was going to the gym and doing curls and extensions with whatever the arm could support: five pounds, ten pounds, whatever.
Blood flow is the most likely explanation there. The simple act of activating those muscles forces blood flow, which can often be restricted in a healing area. Same reason we apply warmth to an area and encourage light massage.
I had always a sneaking suspicion that my RSI pain is psychologically triggered, as when I was in a bad mood my fingers didn’t “want to” be worked with. After reading similar comments on HN I grow more skeptical of this over time, which lead me to disbelieving it’s a real pain and not a psychologically caused one.
I use my fingers on keyboards all day long. Body adapts and grows stronger with use, it doesn’t get more and more vulnerable. After I realized this it went away. Now I can use them 15h/day with 4.5h/day sleep with no problems.
I developed pretty nasty tenosynovitis in my inner wrist from using a Magic Pad over a year. I even tried switching to using it with my left hand instead of my right, and eventually developed the same problem in the other wrist.
It got bad enough I opted for cortisone injections.
This was about 10 years ago. I’ve avoided Apple’s input devices since, opting for proper ergonomic keyboards and mice, with no further RSI thankfully.
> Apple's input devices are beautiful, but they totally blow comfort. It's as if their industrial designers are all in their early 20s and have never experienced joint pain.
Riddle me this: My wife loves the hockeypuck mouse. The only thing that remains of her Tangerine iMac is its orange hockeypuck; I bought her a USBA-to-USBC dongle so she can use it with her MacBook Air.
Fortunately, she uses her computer infrequently enough to be relatively unaffected by RSI issues, so that may have something to do with it.
I first experienced “RSI” with the 1st Gen Magic Mouse (the one that took AA batteries that needed to be replaced every other month). Terrible, terrible design. And they kept it exactly the same for Magic Mouse 2.
“RSI” is not a diagnosis, but rather an umbrella term for “anything repetitive that causes you injury or pain”. The “treatment” for RSI depends on which RSI you have. Even if you Google what all those RSIs are, you probably won’t get a comprehensive list. It’s an underserved area of orthopedic medicine. Anyway, figure out which RSI you have- skin cancer and stomach cancer are treated very differently, and similarly, carpal tunnel syndrome and tendonitis are treated very differently.
Most people with an “RSI” have pain in their hands, but that pain could be caused by an impinged nerve (impingement can occur anywhere between the spine and the carpal tunnel in the wrist), overworked muscles, damaged tendons (very hard to do if you’re under the age of ~50), or arthritis (again, unlikely if you’re under ~50).
Arthritis is very easy to diagnose- you just need to look at an X-Ray of your hand. Conversely, Thoracic Outlet Syndrome is very DIFFICULT to diagnose, partially because many orthopedic surgeons aren’t familiar with it, and partially because nerve impingement is so deep inside you (the shoulder/upper chest area).
My experience with 3 orthopedic surgeons in my city has been consistent- they don’t have the time or attention span to really listen to your symptoms and want to diagnose you ASAP so they can move on to the next patient. Whether this is an issue of our healthcare system or the doctors themselves, I can’t say, but I can say that each one got the diagnosis wrong. They all heard “tingling in the hands” and jumped on carpal tunnel syndrome, even though there was evidence to suggest it wasn’t.
A lot of people swear by the ergonomic/split keyboards, and I’m not sure many realize that those keyboards are mostly adjusting your SHOULDERS- nothing to do with your wrists or hands. They also reduce the pronation your arms are in, which can be beneficial to fatigued muscles, and in rare cases alleviate nerve impingement that occurs around the pronator teres muscle in the arm, but usually impingement there is a result of something like bodybuilding rather than typing on a keyboard for a living. Anyway, if these keyboards do alleviate symptoms, great- but consider that your muscles may be tight in your shoulders, and your posture is probably not what it should be. The keyboard is probably a temporary fix if you don’t stretch, exercise and practice good posture in the “shoulder girdle”.
Have you tried vertical mice? I hvae one and it helps with my carpal tunnel (which incidentally I'm pretty sure was caused by Mac's butterfly keyboards and their lack of travel distance).
I’m not aware of a scientific study that supports the notion that computer/keyboard use leads to CTS. Conversely, I’m aware of many studies that show CTS being caused by the use of vibrating tools + genetics.
While society associates CTS with computer use, it’s actually the dentists and dental hygienists who suffer the most from it. Additionally, CTS predominantly affects women. It’s suspected this is due to their having slightly smaller wrists than men, on average, and CTS is simply compression of the median nerve at the carpal tunnel, which has the median nerve, plus many tendons, going through it.
I would be curious to know if any of the provocative tests for CTS increase your symptoms (eg bending your wrist at 90 degrees for 1 minute). It may be that your nerve impingement is occurring further up (like the shoulder area), and holding your mouse hand less interiorly-rotated is relieving the impingement in the shoulder girdle.
The opposite for me, except that I'm in the 'larger than normal hands' camp. Ergo-optimized devices for the masses don't fit my hands, but they're close enough that I've adapted.
Parametric 3d-printable ergonomic desk stuffs on my to-do list for a few years now.
First, I’ve small hands. I started with the Mighty Mouse[1]. The current Magic Mouse is comfortable for my usage. The Mighty Mouse (Wireless) was the perfect one.
I tried one of those Magic Mouse “enhancements” (2009-2010) -- a white silicon contraption -- that sits atop the mouse. It was handy, and I used it for a while. I eventually got used to the mouse in its form and stopped trying any modifications.
I have tried the Master Series from Logitech, and I like them but don’t use all the functions. I like the simplicity of the Magic Mouse.
Charging - I do it once in 45 days, or when it complains — leave it charged -- have tea, walk/run, or read. Charging was never a problem, and I believe everyone else making a lot of noise about the charging is just overblowing it. If you remember to leave it charged overnight, it needs no charging for the next month or so.
The Mighty Mouse size was nice, but not sure it was worth the constant hassle of cleaning the tiny track ball of whatever microscopic dust mote blocked it from working again and again - every single Mighty Mouse I ever owned would regularly jam up and be a pain to unjam. No other mouse I've ever owned or abused has had a button or wheel stop working, ever.
I do miss the distinctive "click" Apple mice of this era made a lot though.
The Mighty Mouse is almost the perfect mouse, IMHO. Its two flaws are 1) (as the sibling comment pointed out) how the scroll ball accumulates junk and is impossible to clean without cutting open the mouse and the implementation of the side buttons.
Having a first party Apple mouse with real middle click support is awesome. The multi direction scrolling has become a mandatory mouse feature for me. The size and weight are fantastic. For those that have used it, and don’t know, the nearly haptic tic while scrolling is an internal speaker which provides great feedback (especially when the rollers get stuck and the clicking stops so you known it’s time to clean the ball).
I find the Magic Mouse uncomfortable, it has no native middle click, no side buttons. Its best feature is that it fixed the scroll ball.
I finally broke down and bought a new, old stock Mighty Mouse a few months ago. The scroll ball feels so smooth.
The photos show why every magic mouse I've had always wore funny with the 'right button' getting mushy. There's only one microswitch and the right one is just a leaf spring.
Think about having one plane (the entire glass) pressing 2 microswitches. Debouncing one switch is hard enough, now you've got to debounce 2, and detect if the user was doing a really fast double click, or just pressed in the center of the mouse.
Debouncing buttons is a solved problem at all. Thinking that Apple is so good that they put the charging port out of a reason to the bottom but aren't able to debouce two buttons is silly.
I don't endorse that particular listing, it was just the first one in my search results. It has a QI wireless power receiver, and a right-angled lightning connector. The intended usage is to plug it into an iPhone and put a case on top - but I think it'd work just fine on the bottom of a magic mouse. You could put the power transmitter under the mouse mat and never worry about charging ever again!
I haven't tried this so maybe there are practical reasons why it's a bad idea. Has anyone tried it?
A key problem is that charging via the lightning port on a Magic Mouse disables the mouse from working. This was only fully apparent for me from skimming the linked videos in the original post. That is why the person who 'hacked' the magic mouse went to all the trouble of creating a parallel charging circuit which directly charges the battery while in operation.
My contrarian view is that the Magic Mouse _can_ be ergonomic as long as you use to be keyboard-centric and treat the Magic Mouse primarily as an extra-large scroll wheel. Then you'll find the scrolling experience with the Magic Mouse is even better than one with a traditional mouse or a trackpad because you can speed-scroll with any finger, at any angle, and with minimal frictions. I especially enjoy scrolling with the right tip of my ring finger.
I do have a mouse pad that says “Think different” (from the previous millennium) but none that says “You're holding it wrong”. That's a serious gap that any competent mouse pad producer should hasten to fill.
I got me a magic trackpad specifically because Apple's trackpads are so nice, and it allows me to pan/zoom large canvases in both dimensions (I've put it between the split halves of my keyboard, and sometimes use it with my left hand, while the right stays on the mouse). I've never considered panning/scrolling with one finger, it sounds very convenient. I guess this is something that could be hacked in software? Trackpads just send the coordinates of the touch points to the OS right?
Anecdata: however nice is inertia scrolling, me scrolling on the Magic Mouse 100% reliably triggers carpal RSI in under 5min: the activating finger tendon transforms itself into a scorching hell in short order.
For me nothing beat scrolling with an unlocked scrollwheel on my old Logitech mouse. It could keep spinning for >10 seconds and allowed super fast scrolling. Though FPS games with weapon switching bound to the mouse wheel did not like that feature at all...
i think i recall reading somewhere that apple designed the mouse in the way they did in order to prevent people just leaving the mouse on charge 24/7 and hence not using its wireless capability while negatively affecting the battery.
i’m not saying i agree with apple’s decision, but i find the perspective interesting.
No, it was entirely to recycle the design and tooling of the Magic Mouse 1 which used AA batteries. The Magic Trackpad 2 and Magic Keyboard came out the exact same day as the MM2 but both of those happily work plugged in and even work wired while plugged in.
Supply chain guy - This is it right here. Hardware accessories like mice aren’t driving substantial sales or revenue; they’re just a cost of doing business if you sell PCs.
But swapping tooling and retraining staff on assembly is extremely disruptive for a manufacturer. That disruption is passed back to the 1st party brand in incremental FOB and per-unit surcharge.
The incremental cost eats at your margin, which eats at your profit, which eats at your street price.
So, if you’re forced to choose between margin erosion and incremental cost for a product that has little effect on sales growth, you save the money and recycle the design.
People will bitch about the port on that mouse while they walk to the Apple Store to buy a new Mac that comes bundled with said mouse.
Apple will save millions annually by not optimizing a product that doesn’t really make them any money on its own.
When it’s reasonably cost effective to make a better peripheral, they will. Until then, they’re going to pay more attention to their books than people’s complaints, because mice don’t drive their business.
The mouse sells for $79, it is a rather expensive mouse, and the Macs that come bundled with that mouse are really expensive computers.
Also that's Apple we are talking about, they are huge and can use manufacturing processes no one else can afford to use. And if it can improve their design even a tiny bit, they do. For example, when designing injection molded plastic parts, most designers feature what is called a draft angle, which mean the walls are not straight and parallel but at an angle, this is to help the part come out of the mold easily. Not Apple. Apple want its walls straight because they think it looks better, and they do what it takes to do it, even if it is much harder and expensive.
So, no, I don't believe Apple will compromise its design for technical details like swapping tooling and retraining staff, especially considering that the product has been out in its current form for more than a decade. They have more than enough resources to do exactly the mouse they want.
I also don't believe the "it comes for free with an iMac so no one cares" argument. Again, Apple attention to details is legendary and people pay good money for that, and it is not like they are bundling a cheap plastic mouse like most manufacturers, it is one of the most premium looking mouse on the market, with unique features.
All that to say that it has to be a deliberate choice, not a quirk of the manufacturing process.
Oh there’s no shortage of people that defend the MM.
That anyone uses this mouse for an extended period is insane. It’s heavy a fuck, not ergonomic in the slightest, has insane uncomfortable edging, and cannot be used plugged in.
I love the touch sensitive surface and prefer it over any other mouse with a spinning disc for scrolling. Is there another mouse out there that has a similar surface? I would switch in a heartbeat because I agree with the rest of your criticisms.
A more plausible explanation was that the cable strain of not using a specialty cable was also an issue. Look at where the cable attaches to the mouse on a conventional mouse - it's usually very reinforced internally or extenernally
it has become a meme, but really a non-issue in real life if you used the mouse yourself really. A minute or so of charging is enough to power it for a whole day of use. plug it again when you leave your desk for a bit and you'll have enough charge for days.
You could just spring for two mice. And if you do find yourself in a rush and your mouse dies then just go for the backup and charge the dead mouse and it becomes the backup.
Who do you think you are dispelling memes and disenfranchising the chuds who need something to complain about. I mean really? Why do you have to bring actual use and reality into it?
Seriously though. This is absolutely correct. I get that some people don't like it, but I really don't get the obsession with the charging port.
I guess I should be glad that these people didn't complain the Apple Watch can't be worn while it's charging.
The fact that you only need to charge it once a month indicates the battery isn't going through many cycles. I expect the battery to last a very long time.
Neither of those gets wiggled around during use though.
The wireless mice I've had with optionally connected cords for data/charging do tend to have a big glob of plastic at the end that locks into the mouse housing so none of the strain is on the actual USB connection.
The first-gen magic trackpad is even worse. It sits so close to a USB port, it's on the same spot on my desk 99.999% of the time, it has no valid reason to be wireless, yet it needs 2 AA batteries just because. Charging and swapping them is cumbersome and it always dies when you least expect it. Bluetooth is finicky too at times. I was looking forward to a USB-C magic mouse to replace it yet it didn't come.
I still have and use an Apple branded AA chargers (came with Eneloops in Apple livery). It has the same connection system as the external chargers so I normally have it connected to a long cable. Used it internationally with the same adaptors as for my MacBook charger.
Received a refurbed Mac and someone had swapped out their mouse for my rechargeable one... always a song and dance to re-connect every time the batteries die. (I pretty much use another mouse to get to the Bluetooth icon on the menu, I'm no Mac expert.)
I always shake my fist in the air and curse "Eric Seifert's Mouse" semi-silently in frustration!
The reason for the thinness of the Apple Mouse is so that gestures can be used on the top like a trackpad. If it were domes like a typical Logitech mouse, you couldn’t do that. Whether those gestures turned out to be useful is another question but that was the reason.
I imagine they also wanted to make 1 mouse ambidextrous. Maybe they should just tilt it and ask the user to choose handedness. I use a track ball and split keyboard and it has never been an issue no one can use my setup except me.
The constant need to have lithium ion is really terrible. Battery life is less of an issue when I can swap batteries quickly with common sizes.
Do you use an Apple mouse? It's not like you are frequently charging. Just plug it in while you go get a coffee or lunch and you are good for weeks. It displays a low charge warning in the menubar to alert you.
I found having to always keep a supply of batteries at hand was more inconvenient than just plugging in the mouse once in a while.
I have a 2xAA Magic Mouse that I still use occasionally. Feels a little heavier than the later models, can't tell them apart otherwise without looking at the bottom.
The Magic Mouse charge port is deliberate. Apple knows that people would leave the cable connected if it were placed at the edge. that would undermine the wireless aesthetic.
Additionally, all the existing lightning cables would not make good mouse cords because of their length, flexibility, and lack of strain relief.
Apple chose not to allow people to keep a cable connected not just for the aesthetics but also to keep them from reusing existing cables (instead of an hypothetical lightning mouse cord) and getting a poor UX.
And if people left it plugged in all the time, it messes with the battery life?
The idea that Apple did this because they didn't know what they were doing is weird. Of course they knew what they were doing. You can charge it in a minute or two.
There are thousands of mice available on the market, and almost all of them can be used on a Mac. It's strange that anyone bothers to fix any mouse. Just buy a mouse that fits your requirements.
I’m not saying he shouldn’t do it, I’m just saying it’s strange.
Magic Mouse was designed to be held with two fingers and moved with the wrist.
Personally I would never buy a product completely, diametrically different from what I need and then adapt it. But I guess some people like the challenge and I have no problem with that.
I have one of those wireless magic mouse that takes 2x AA batteries.
The optical sensor started behaving in a weird way back in 2018 I think, so I stopped using it. I wouldn't mind risking breaking it by trying to fix the sensor (cleaning the lens from the inside is probably enough), adding a rechargeable battery (and whatever circuitry that entails) and maybe even enhancing the ergonomics if it still works after that.
In practice most people don't care about the charging port being on the bottom because even if you forget to charge it for several weeks and it actually stops working it only takes two minutes to charge it up enough for 8 hours of work.
As far as ergonomics goes, I've never had any more problems with a Magic Mouse than with any other mouse including ergonomic mice.
People make fun of "you're holding it wrong", but really RSI does come down to holding and manipulating things in ways that aren't good for you. What ergonomic design does is try to make it so you that you will discover and use a good way of holding the thing on your own and/or try to make it so that it is hard to hold it in a bad way.
That doesn't mean that things that do not have an ergonomic design cannot be used ergonomically. It just means you might have to consciously work at holding and manipulating them safely at least until that becomes habitual.
For the Magic Mouse the way I hold it has my fingers and palm and wrist in the same position they would be in if I were just resting my arm on the table. The mouse is the right size and shape to fit well in the dome make by the curve of my resting fingers and resting palm.
I don't really have a grip on it. It is more caged than held. Movement is mostly moving my whole arm. My wrist has barely any movement at all. Even when scrolling the wrist barely moves. Instead my arm backs up and raises so my middle finger can bend down and scroll.
A lot of us care about the charging port being on the bottom. It’s ludicrous. I can leave any top of the line Logitech mouse plugged in all the time and never have to even think about charging.
I'd bet that people who leave a wireless mouse plugged in all the time are a very tiny minority of mouse users. Most people want to use their wireless mouse wirelessly.
For that vast majority the only consequence of the Magic Mouse port being on the bottom is that if they forget to charge their mouse for weeks and it dies in the middle of the day with the Magic Mouse they have to stop using the mouse for two minutes to get through the rest of the day whereas with the other mouse they would not lose those two minutes of mouse time.
Except it’s not comparable because they make a case for the Magic Mouse, don’t allow charging it and use a lens to have the sensor track while this guy added a charging port and disassembled his mouse to have the sensor truly be on the surface
Yeah, I honestly don't get the hate about the magic mouse
"Oh but you have to charge it upside down", yes. Every something like 3 months I have to stop for some 15min (if I don't remember to charge it first) to be able to use it for the rest of the day and then charge it when I'm not using
It is really one complaint that's more internet meme than an actual grievance
For a company as obsessed with design as Apple, it's a bad design. A mouse sitting upside-down, or on its side, on a desk is not exactly elegant. Even if it's just for a short period of time every 3 months, it's still an ugly solution. It's on par with the Apple Pencil that charged in the bottom of the iPad.
A MagSafe connection to the front of the mouse seems like it would be much better.
I have an old AA version of the Magic Mouse, I'd much rather use that over the current Magic Mouse, though I currently use a Logitech. If they ever move the charging port off the bottom, I might give the Apple mouse another look.
> A MagSafe connection to the front of the mouse seems like it would be much better.
Yes, but even that would change the aesthetic of the mouse when right-side up. Though yes, I like your suggestion
> It's on par with the Apple Pencil that charged in the bottom of the iPad.
That's probably worse though. And yes I agree it is bad
Basically yes, while charging upside down is ugly I think they kinda accept it because it's not "while in use" (also there might have been some space or other design constraints, etc)
I think GP might have suggested a flush connection that would allow the mouse to stay flat and even operable while charging.
In any case, given the thinness of Lightning, I still don't see how it would be impossibly ugly to have had such a connector at the top end of the mouse, turning it into a wired one during charge. The current Magic Mouse design is a compromised "plywood on the back of a chest of drawers" design.
As a hobby project: cool. But as a solution to a problem, how about not supporting companies that make ridiculously overpriced products with hugely deficient functional designs? Apple consistently makes products that work worse than their competitors', for quadruple the price, but, hey, I guess they "look nice".
...which is subjective, personally I think Apple products look absolutely atrocious, with half of screen real estate of their software attributed to padding, and all their product's surfaces the blandest possible solid colors imaginable. So when a product not only functions worse, is several times the price, but also looks bad, what's left?
> Apple consistently makes products that work worse than their competitors’, for quadruple the price
This is also subjective. Personally, I find Apple products to work far better than the competition. I have to use Windows every day at work and I find the experience miserable, and I’ve had 3 different Android phones and always find myself returning to the iPhone.
As for the price, Apple products do cost a bit more, but quadruple is quite the exaggeration. Comparable ultrabooks to the MacBook Pro (Dell XPS line, ThinkPad X1) aren’t massively far off, and they’re made of plastic, not aluminum, which makes a difference in durability in my experience. As for mobile, the iPhone is priced in line with other high-end smartphones like the Galaxy and Pixel lines.
> how about not supporting companies that make ridiculously overpriced products with hugely deficient functional designs?
You made a very good point.
This whole post reminds me the whole iPhone Jailbreak thing: people devoting an huge amount of time and effort to "fix" something Apple doesn't want to be fixed.
And they're even proud of it! I find it to be utterly pathetic.
Over and over again Apple forces their manipulative decisions over their costumers and the majority just follows along.
And the funniest thing is the standard reaction on HN, a place for Apple fanboys. When Microsoft does the same this place erupts with anger, e.g: all the complaints about adds and telemetry on Windows. If Apple does it they invent excuses and over-complicated workarounds for it.
I always thought that the Magic Mouse was really the ideal technology for interacting with a Mac--just too bad that it's so unergonomic. I can't prove it, but I blame a decade of Magic Mouse use for my very painful RSI, which I now have the pleasure of experiencing using any mouse at all.
Apple's input devices are beautiful, but they totally blow comfort. It's as if their industrial designers are all in their early 20s and have never experienced joint pain.