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Comment by Wowfunhappy | Hacker News Reader

> It is rumoured that Apple put the charging port in such an awkward place to force people to unplug the cable as soon as the mouse is charged.

You say this as if it's absolutely typical of Steve Jobs. I read it and think exactly the opposite. Jobs was certainly a stickler for aesthetics, but also for usability. I've read numerous accounts of him lashing out when he found a workflow noticeably frustrating.

What decisions made during Jobs's tenure would you consider comparable to the Magic Mouse's charging port?

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We can talk about a Jobs diaster without even leaving the field of mice. The puck mouse was an absolute usability nightmare. It had a circular shape and would always end up twisting slightly so you could never consistently move the direction you expected.

You're holding your phone wrong, mate.

Did you ever use an original iMac? That mouse would create RSI just looking at it.

Their keyboards got progressively worse as well.

Another great example was the iBooks that soaked up skin oils and became gross and disgusting.

> Their keyboards got progressively worse as well.

During Jobs's tenure? The 2010-era Apple Bluetooth Keyboard is actually my favorite keyboard to type on. I'm currently using one I tracked down on eBay after my original finally broke.

> Another great example was the iBooks that soaked up skin oils and became gross and disgusting.

That's a long term problem. It's not the same type of general workflow issue that Jobs was really good at identifying.

> The 2010-era Apple Bluetooth Keyboard is actually my favorite keyboard to type on.

Ugh. I absolutely hated that keyboard. Felt like tapping on a slab of granite all day long.

Yeah, I can't imagine him endorsing some sort of forced dark pattern behavior like that. His biography talked about going to great lengths to make his jet bathroom door toggle instead of using two separate lock and unlock buttons.

It's not a forced dark pattern. Others are leaving out a lot of detail about the product design.

* The mouse supports fast charging - 2mins on the charger gives you all day use.

* A full charge will give you more than 2mo of battery life - nearly 3.

* In 24 months, you will have to put it on the charger between 6 and 8 times TOTAL.

With that context, the design makes perfect sense for a wireless mouse.

This still sounds pointlessly inconvenient compared to a wired mouse, not to mention reliability and latency issues that come part and parcel with wireless peripherals.

I tried a wireless keyboard once and every 10 minutes it would hang and repeat the last key I pressed for 10 seconds. How much better is the situation today?

It is obviously not the case with all the wireless peripheral devices out there or they would not exist. Did you really believe that there is people out there putting up with keys being repeated randomly?

I'm sure it's better now, I just asked how much better.

I’m sorry you got downvoted for asking the question. But I guess it’s 100% better, that doesn’t happen and no one would tolerate that these days, they just work.

Imho indistinguishable, at least outside of gaming.

Even in professional gaming, wireless mice have become the standard.

How long ago was this? You make it sounds like you last tried wireless peripherals in the 90s, gave up, and never tried again.

I started using Apple wireless peripherals over a decade ago and haven’t experienced anything like what you describe once. I remember PC peripherals doing that kind of thing in the 90s though, back before everything switched to Bluetooth and everything used proprietary IR dongles etc.

Some time in the early 2010s, but it was from a clearance store.

I’m not sure about keyboards, but as far as mice are concerned, wireless mice have become the standard for professional gamers.

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