Rod HiltonFeb 11, 2024

Just saw yet another hot take about how the Apple magic mouse is the worst-designed thing ever and how Apple thinks they're so smart but designed a mouse you couldn't plug in and charge while using so they're actually all really stupid, etc.

Still surprised people don't understand this was intentional. Jobs wanted a *cordless* mouse, so it annoyed him to see the charging cable while in use, it made it look regular.

The design was to prevent anyone from ever using it while charging it.

Show threadNTFB ScottFeb 11, 2024
@rodhilton "It's exactly what Steve Jobs wanted" and "It's badly designed" aren't necessarily mutually exclusive statements. Just because the guy had some good ideas doesn't mean he never had bad ones.
LesdmarkFeb 12, 2024
Show threadRod Hilton

@ntfbscott saying that it's badly designed because it explicitly prevents a thing that the designers wanted to prevent just makes no sense to me. You might not like it but it's hard to argue it's "bad" when it does exactly what it set out to do.

That's like looking at a plane and saying "this car is a piece of shit, it'll never fit on a road"

Feb 11, 2024 at 4:10pmMastodon for Android
Show threadNTFB ScottFeb 12, 2024
@rodhilton Is the mouse intended to be Steve Jobs's mouse, or is it supposed to be millions of customers' mouse? The design is great if the goal is to cater to the idiosyncratic tastes of one guy who's been gone for more than a decade, not so great if the goal is to make using an Apple product easier and more convenient for Apple customers. Since I'm not an Apple product designer but am a possible Apple customer, that's the perspective I look at it from.
Show threadRod HiltonFeb 12, 2024
@ntfbscott the goal was for it never to be seen by customers corded
Show threadNTFB ScottFeb 12, 2024
@rodhilton That's kind of just arguing semantics. So the terrible UX isn't the result of product designers making a product with terrible UX, but instead the result of designers' bosses giving them design goals that ignored the UX? As a user, I'd say a difference that makes no difference is no difference. If the mouse battery running low means I can't use my computer for an hour or two, that's a bad design, regardless of why it was made that way. I just want to be able to use my mouse.
Show threadNTFB ScottFeb 12, 2024
@rodhilton To steal your airplane analogy, if airlines continually shrink passenger space to fit more seats on each plane, as a passenger trying to cram my legs into the 25mm of legroom they give me, I say that's a terrible design, and no amount of "But their goal isn't your comfort, their goal is to sell more tickets per flight," is going to convince me otherwise.