Magic Mouse 2 = Ultimate form over function.
I'm really not sure how people are not flipping out over the charging port placement of the new Magic Mouse 2.
I'll be completely fair and honest and say "it shouldn't matter, all things considered". But, I can also say without any hesitation that had Microsoft unveiled the exact same mouse the internet would have lost its shit over the placement of that charger.
Why it truly isn't a huge problem; 2 minutes of charge from dead supposedly gives 9 hours battery life. That is pretty damn impressive.
Apple has done one thing they tend to do quite well. Make every possible attempt to engineer around a bad design rather than fix it. And, I guarantee, if your battery dies, those will be the longest 2 minutes in history. IT IS a bad design, any argument otherwise is simply idiotic. A mouse is a productivity device. A mouse flipped upside down to charge provides zero functionality for that duration, however small it may be.
Basically, it sounds like they KNEW it was a bad design from a functional perspective. BUT they wanted it to look more elegant and flawless, so they wanted to hide it. This isn't an uncommon frame of mind from Apple. And, if read the Steve Jobs biography, you get the impression that they are trying to channel Jobs here. But, in my mind, it fails. I WILL laugh uncontrollably at the first person I see in Starbucks with their Magic Mouse 2 inverted and charging.
The functional solution would be a charge port in a location where the mouse could still be used while plugged in. Or, a removable battery would mean you could carry a backup in the event on died.
This, to me, is the same drive to aesthetic beauty that caused the "Command" button to come into existence. The command button, and I can think of no other way of wording this, is the Apple equivalent of moving the right mouse button onto the keyboard and then pretending they eliminated a button from the mouse just so that they can claim that they somehow revolutionized the mouse by making it more simplistic. Sure, the mouse, physically, in and of itself, detached from the context within which it is used, is more simplistic thanks to the change. The Mac OS UX on the other hand and they keyboard suffer from the exact opposite.
And these aren't the only such examples. You can look to most ways in which Apple products not only differ from existing products at launch, but also at the features none of their competitors adopt over time.
Apple is second to none at engineering solutions to problems that need not exist. Stemming, quite likely, from the fact that they are also the masters of engineering problems that needn't exist.
Sometimes they get lucky at the over engineered solution does more than just solve the problem. Touchscreen smartphones are a prime example. They made all manner of data input horrendous by removing physical number keys and QWERTY keyboards. BUT, they also made the first phone UI large enough to house interesting amounts or data or to use for gaming. But, at the end of the day, the touchscreen seems a lot like it might have just been an over engineering solution to eradicating keyboards on phones.
I'll be completely fair and honest and say "it shouldn't matter, all things considered". But, I can also say without any hesitation that had Microsoft unveiled the exact same mouse the internet would have lost its shit over the placement of that charger.
Why it truly isn't a huge problem; 2 minutes of charge from dead supposedly gives 9 hours battery life. That is pretty damn impressive.
Apple has done one thing they tend to do quite well. Make every possible attempt to engineer around a bad design rather than fix it. And, I guarantee, if your battery dies, those will be the longest 2 minutes in history. IT IS a bad design, any argument otherwise is simply idiotic. A mouse is a productivity device. A mouse flipped upside down to charge provides zero functionality for that duration, however small it may be.
Basically, it sounds like they KNEW it was a bad design from a functional perspective. BUT they wanted it to look more elegant and flawless, so they wanted to hide it. This isn't an uncommon frame of mind from Apple. And, if read the Steve Jobs biography, you get the impression that they are trying to channel Jobs here. But, in my mind, it fails. I WILL laugh uncontrollably at the first person I see in Starbucks with their Magic Mouse 2 inverted and charging.
The functional solution would be a charge port in a location where the mouse could still be used while plugged in. Or, a removable battery would mean you could carry a backup in the event on died.
This, to me, is the same drive to aesthetic beauty that caused the "Command" button to come into existence. The command button, and I can think of no other way of wording this, is the Apple equivalent of moving the right mouse button onto the keyboard and then pretending they eliminated a button from the mouse just so that they can claim that they somehow revolutionized the mouse by making it more simplistic. Sure, the mouse, physically, in and of itself, detached from the context within which it is used, is more simplistic thanks to the change. The Mac OS UX on the other hand and they keyboard suffer from the exact opposite.
And these aren't the only such examples. You can look to most ways in which Apple products not only differ from existing products at launch, but also at the features none of their competitors adopt over time.
Apple is second to none at engineering solutions to problems that need not exist. Stemming, quite likely, from the fact that they are also the masters of engineering problems that needn't exist.
Sometimes they get lucky at the over engineered solution does more than just solve the problem. Touchscreen smartphones are a prime example. They made all manner of data input horrendous by removing physical number keys and QWERTY keyboards. BUT, they also made the first phone UI large enough to house interesting amounts or data or to use for gaming. But, at the end of the day, the touchscreen seems a lot like it might have just been an over engineering solution to eradicating keyboards on phones.
Comments
Post a Comment