Worse, it had a ridiculously short cord that was prone to failure. It’s pretty when it’s new, but it becomes a mess of scratches in short order. Unfortunately, this mouse, first released in 1993, would be the last one Apple makes to which I would give a grade over C-.Īpple’s first optical mouse, the Pro Mouse was at least not round, though it followed the questionable “transparent case” design motif of the Power Mac G4 Cube. It was the most ergonomic and well-designed mouse (for its time) that Apple has ever produced.Īnd you could even get it in an awesome matte black color! While it still should have had a right mouse button, this was the clear apex of Apple mouse design. This may be the most ergonomic mouse Apple’s ever made.Ī few years later, Apple updated the ADB mouse with a new plastic shell that gave it a teardrop shape, with a bulbous back side. The teardrop ADB Mouse II Stephen Edmonds Apple commonly mistakes additional buttons as additional complexity, but holding down the control key and clicking, or long-clicking, is not simpler and more intuitive than clicking a right mouse button. If we had one finger on our hands rather than four, our hands might be simpler, but our interactions with the world would likely be more complicated. For some reason, Apple’s reluctance to have more than one mouse button would plague its design ethos for ages. This is where Apple should have introduced a second mouse button. It came first with the Apple IIGS, then later to the Mac. This was, for the time, a legitimately good mouse, with superior ergonomics. It was still boxy, but the “fat end” moved to the back, and the whole thing was slimmer with a flatter button.

With the switch to the Apple Desktop Bus, Apple refined its mouse.

The first ADB mouse was an ergonomic improvement, while sticking to the blocky lines of the computers of the day. Macintosh mouse wasn’t great, but it was at least as great as any other mouse. They used ball mechanisms that got caught full of desk gunk and didn’t fit your hand well. It wasn’t a great mouse by today’s standards, but all mice back then were bad. It was boxy with chamfered edges that sort of looked like the Macintosh, and had a single huge button-the days of multi-button mice were still years away. The original Macintosh came with the original Apple Mouse.

Mac ergonomic keyboard and mouse