Gallery: 25 Years Of Apple Mouse Evolution

By Giles Turnbull (5:22 pm, Dec 22 2009)

Photo by raneko - click to view original

Flickr user raneko (who is no stranger to regular Cult readers) has just uploaded a bunch of fantastic photos of Apple mice through the ages.

Photo by raneko - click to view original

They document the changes we’ve seen from the bulky, blocky Macintosh Mouse to today’s multi-touch wireless Magic Mouse.

Photo by raneko - click to view original

And if you’ve ever wondered what the inside of a Macintosh Mouse looked like – and the differences between the US, Irish and Taiwanese versions – well, now you can find out.

Photo by raneko - click to view original

There are many more photos to see. They’re not in a set of their own, but you can easily browse them if you look at this archive page for the day they were uploaded.

Thanks to raneko for CC licensing these photos and thereby letting us show them to you on Cult of Mac.

8 comments »

About the author

Giles Turnbull is a freelance writer in England. He writes for the Press Association and The Morning News. He has a website you can ignore and a Twitter account you needn't follow.

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Posted in 25 Years of Mac, Hardware, News, Vintage Tech |

http://techdweeb.com univac
Beautiful!
I have a similar collection of mice hanging in my studio. I also have several various of the colored “hockey pucks”, a IIgs mouse, and a Lisa mouse.
Neat!
Alex
@And 25 years later and the concept of ergonomics still eludes them.
http://Applebashing Gazoobee
Yeah, this really makes it crystal clear how bad in general Macintosh mice are. There are only a few winners in this bunch.
Personally, I’ve always thought it the flaw in having Steve Jobs personally critique every product Apple makes. Obviously different people like different kinds of mice, and clearly, what Steve Jobs thinks is a good mouse design is not what most other people think is a good mouse design.
Watch Steve when he does a demo next time. He holds the mouse like it’s a piece of poo at the end of his fingers with his hand arched up above it. Only a couple of people out of every hundred hold a mouse that way.
ged
Yes the Apple mouse is easily the worst part of the design history for Macintosh.
I love Mac but use Microsoft mice!
The new one is the best but the battery is flawed and anti-environment, iron given the green publicity.
Cool pics!
Maximoose
@Ged
Smart people think alike, not different. Buying a Mac and using a Microsoft mouse is the best way to use your fruit ^_^
Wirelessly, the Microsoft Arc is hot. G33K hot.
Daniel
The newest wireless Apple Mouse is actually decent… but IMHO the hard/sharp edges need to be tapered.
My all-time favorite Apple Mouse was the (single-button) beige oval mouse that shipped with the beige G3 PowerMacs, that was the mouse that sold for a decade prior to the introduction of the nasty “hockey puck” for original iMac.
http://myFirstGarage.com/forums Eric
I’m sitting here looking at the lineup, and realizing that I’m 3 steps out of date.
PS: After 20 years of using ONLY mac mice – no Carpel Tunnel issues here.