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Comment by prawn | Hacker News Reader

The article/interviewee suggests it was the first mainstream optical mouse, launched in 2000. Didn't the Intellimouse have it around 1999, plus a scrollwheel? I remember using a range of Microsoft mice going back many years and they were pretty well known.

Actually, the Wheel Mouse Optical I still use today is from late-2000, I think. For a while in the middle, I used one of the darker grey Explorers before returning to the lighter and older version.

Anyone else remember round/puck mice from before that Apple one, mid-1990s? First encountered that shape of mouse in a Unix lab.

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It's difficult to find the history of the IntelliMouse, but it looked like the original one launched around 1998 had the scrollwheel and a mouse ball, but the second generation one has the optical addition. Not sure when it launched though. According to this site: http://www.oldmouse.com/mouse/microsoft/ it's around 1999. But there is no attribution or month listed. This was for the 1.0 version though, that was quickly discontinued. 1.1A launched as a minor hardware revision later, and the first reliable one seems to be the 3.0 from forum posts on the subject, which dropped around 2001-2002.

The history of the Apple Pro Mouse is super-easy to find though, it launched in July 2000. So sayeth Apple-History and MacTracker. Looks like MS was first to market but with a fairly flaky original and refined it on the market.

It might have been the IntelliMouse Explorer, with the red bottom and LED.

Optical Intellimouse came out in 1999 -

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/1999/apr99/eyepr.a...

DEC used three button puck-style mice, the one you saw was likely attached to a DECStation and I think DEC had been using them for quite a while, maybe from the mid to late 80s. Here's logitech's first mouse from 1982 which is also a puck.

http://www.oldmouse.com/mouse/logitech/p4.shtml

Mouse Systems, Steve Kirsch's company, was shipping optical mice in 1982. They were standard issue on Sun workstations for years. I leave it to your judgment whether that qualifies as "mainstream".

I remember Sun's mice. You needed a special mouse pad with a grid layout printed on it.

Mainstream is debatable, yes, but the quote used the word consumer, which Sun definitely wasn't.

The Mouse Systems optical mice were available for other, consumer, platforms as well. We had a Mouse Systems optical mouse (with the metal grid mousepad) for our Mac Classic in the early 90's.

A Sun 360 deskside computer was definitely consumer, it was only the size of a filing cabinet (definitely made for nuclear war though, heavily shielded).

Are those the ones that needed special metal mousepads? Those were rad. My dad had one for drafting.

yes, they are.

My first mouse was a Mouse Systems serial mouse - in my 286 - today I picked up a NIB PS/2 Mouse Systems mouse with pad.

I had that original Intellimouse, and it was definitely 1999. I had a G3 minitower and USB was still the new hotness. I actually had to buy a USB card to stick in my G3. I also got myself one Gravis Gamepad Pro controllers at the same time. USB Overdrive got a hell of a workout back then.

I to this day still use the IntelliMouse. They are hard to find at times and I found someone on Alibaba selling knock-offs I've been real tempted to try.

Yep. I'm using an intellimouse from c.a. 2001 as my main pointing device. It's a 5 button + wheel, usb/ps2 version. I've also got a simpler 3 button + wheel one, but it's newer, and doesn't feel as nice.

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