July 24, 2006: The world gets its first glimpse of Apple’s new wireless Mighty Mouse, a multibutton Bluetooth device with super-accurate laser tracking.
Photos of the accessory come to light through an Apple filing with the Federal Communications Commission. Apple will launch the device the very next day.
Apple finally breaks the one-button barrier
The wireless Mighty Mouse came a year after the wired version, which itself brought a big change for Apple. Up until that point, every mouse the company shipped for the Mac came with only one button.
Designed to simplify the experience of using a mouse, this constraint proved unnecessary by the 2000s. After all, many users had been using mice for the majority of their lives at this point.
The Mighty Mouse came with two buttons, a miniature trackball for scrolling, and side squeeze sensors — greatly boosting the functionality of Apple’s pointing peripheral. To get around Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ hatred of visible buttons, it retained the “no button” design of the company’s previous mouse. (That design came about after Jobs accidentally approved an unfinished mouse prototype.)
Wireless Mighty Mouse: Now with lasers!
Photo: Feureau/Wikipedia CC
Users loved the Mighty Mouse. It faced only minor criticisms for things like the inability to click both right and left buttons at the same time (which continues with Apple’s current mice), and the fact that the scroll ball eventually became clogged with dirt and required cleaning.
Unlike the wired version, twin AA batteries powered the wireless Mighty Mouse. Apple claimed the new laser tracking, which replaced the original device’s optical tracking, made the Bluetooth mouse 20 times more accurate.
The wireless version cost $69 (plus whatever you’d spend on the AA batteries). The Apple Magic Mouse superseded it in October 2009.
Did you own a wireless Mighty Mouse? What is your favorite Apple mouse in history? Leave your comments below.
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
6 responses to “Today in Apple history: Mighty Mouse goes wireless — with lasers!”
And it sucked. Apple cannot build a decent peripheral to save their lives. All of their mice and keyboards suck. Apple has always been blamed for choosing form over function, sometimes without merit. But in this case, I think it’s well deserved. Even their latest and greatest mice and keyboards suck.
I for one love this mouse. I had the wired version. That rollerball enabled you to scroll around an image or website rather than merely up and down.
Yes, it got dirty and lost its functionally but what mouse didn’t get clogged down? Nothing a cotton bud couldn’t fix.
And I loved the hidden buttons. All my PC friends would roll their eyes at it declaring, “Pft…only one button…” But when they saw you do left and right clicks they wondered where the buttons were. And because I had widgets set to appear when tapping the side buttons that impressed them mightily.
A great mouse that would be replaced by an even greater mouse.
I had a wired Mighty Mouse and it was great, I loved it. It was really easy to clean the track ball and it never gave me any problem, it was very accurate.
As for other Apple peripherals I note that another person (Name goes here) is heavily criticising them. I suggest he does not have practical experience of what he is talking about. I presently have an Apple Keyboard and a Magic Trackpad. Both are fantastic. The idea of Apple to build a peripheral keyboard following the design of laptop keyboards is fantastic. When I see the big, ugly PC keyboards with Cherry keys or whatever, all clunky and clicky I just feel sorry for the poor users of them. They do not have much real alternative as the PC market is chockablock with such awful periperals. Logitech seem to have some decent stuff for sale though.
Re: Magic Trackpad it is another phenomenal design and again a great idea to build a peripheral along the lines of laptop tech. I so much prefer to use a stationary trackpad that is a great size too, to using a mouse, which is in my eyes at least a technology of yesteryear in comparison. Trackpads for the future, until something better comes up.
I still have a wireless mighty mouse that I use daily and, despite have to disassembly it to clean the ball, I love it!
I have been a fan of rollerballs going way back but the mechanicals would constantly clog with dust and gunk. I grew tired of cleaning them. When the digital versions arrived, cleaning became much less of a problem. Apple’s rollerball mouse needed occasional cleaning as well, but I thought it was a good mouse.
As for wireless, my working style is better suited for a wired mouse. As for Apple’s other mice, other than the original hockey puck iMac mouse, I’ve always been okay with them. Personally, I prefer a mouse that is made for a specific hand dominance, as the slope accommodates the fact that the finger for the right button is lower than the index finger. I was accidentally triggering right clicks.
My beef (which does not represent the mainstream) is with keyboards. The overwhelming majority of Mac users (and a ton of PC users as well) like the flat, laptop-styled keyboards. I prefer those with sculpted keys, as they provide a better tactile clues of where you are on the keyboard and they tend to keep the fingers where they belong. Even after using the flat keyboards for years, if I’m at an odd angle, I can end up typing gibberish.
As an aside, having been around for a long while, I have often heard blanket condemnations of this or that – Macs are junk / PCs are garbage, or whatever. I take everything on its individual merits, and this includes peripherals. Some stuff I like, some I don’t, but I have rarely encountered anything that was all bad or all good.
BTW, the reason why Apple dropped the Mighty Mouse name was because of the cartoon character. Although Jobs liked to think that Mac had come “to save the day”, the TerryToons folks didn’t like the poaching.
Apple is the only company that design and produce peripherals I love to use, not only because they are aesthetically pleasing to see and touch.