Pucking Hell! The Apple USB Mouse; A design disaster or storm in a teacup?
Published: Wednesday, 29th May 2019
Apple have done much more right than wrong over the years, redefining personal computing with each bold new step they took; from the original Macintosh and its GUI, through the powerhouse tower Macs of the early 90s, to the ever-slimming notebook range, and into the mobile computing revolution and beyond. That said, despite their many wins, Apple have occasionally dropped a clanger, and the Apple USB Mouse is one of them.
Shipped with the original iMac in 1998, the Apple USB Mouse quickly became known as the “Hockey Puck Mouse” due to its circular form. Fashioned in the same translucent and coloured plastic as the iMac itself, the Puck certainly looked striking but it rapidly became an object of derision amongst Mac users, not to mention the hoards of haters always standing by to put the boot in. You see, being circular, it’s actually difficult to keep track of which direction the thing is pointing in, which isn’t the best case scenario for a device whose sole purpose is to point in directions… All previous (and subsequent, I think, I can’t think of any other circular mice from any other manufacturers…) mice were elongated along the “up-down” axis, giving users the sub-conscious tactile feedback to know they were moving it in the correct direction.
It’s a little baffling how this mouse managed to escape the Apple design lab, but it did and they stuck with it, adding an indentation to the button to provide some tactile response for users. I’ve spent the last 12 months or so using one of these on my office iMac G4, initially out of necessity as it was the only mouse I happened to have to hand when I set the computer up here, but I soon got used to it enough that I didn’t really notice its flaws; whilst to start with it absolutely was difficult to use without constantly having to rotate it back to the correct orientation, within no time really I was using it without error and without having to think about it. So, all in all, maybe not as much of a foul design as its reputation would have us believe!
Whatever the reality, the Apple USB Mouse didn’t last long and was replaced in 2000 by the Apple Pro Mouse. This was a more traditional device, being in an elongated form, and completely resolved the complained-about issues. I really do like the Pro Mouse, and also its successor the Mighty Mouse, but that daft old Puck has earned a place in my heart!
Thanks for reading, please follow me on Twitter to keep abreast of all my latest Macintosh discoveries. And please do consider supporting my work via Paypal or via Patreon. Every penny donated goes towards keeping this VintageAppleMac.com show on the road!
Best mouse ever! 🙂
When every other mouse in the house fails, there’s always the old reliable Bondi Blue Hockey Puck ready to re-enlist for another tour. The mouse pad on my MacBook Air crapped out almost two years ago, and the Puck has taken up the slack.