Magic Mouse charging port: Apple’s biggest design crime ever?
- yaya945
- 2024年10月29日
- 讀畢需時 2 分鐘
Magic Mouse charging port: Apple’s biggest design crime ever?
Apple has just announced a new iMac with M4 chip, and alongside its refreshed all-in-one PC, it's also let slip that it's redesigned the Magic Mouse that comes with it.
both the Magic Mouse and the Magic Keyboard now come with USB-C ports. That's right, the Lightning cable, which used to also charge iPhones and iPads until the EU (and other institutions) forced Apple to switch to the non-proprietary USB-C, is now dead.
This is great news, especially as now that iPhones and iPads don't use Lightning cables, people just don't have that many lying around any more, which can be annoying when the peripherals run out of battery. Now, you can charge the Magic Mouse, Keyboard or Trackpad using the same USB-C cable you use to charge your iPhone, MacBook and other peripherals.
Apple's shift from its own Lightning connector, in use since 2012, to USB-C was sparked by European Union policies enacted in 2022. Apple gradually implemented USB-C on other devices, like its iPad Pro and MacBooks, over time, but the iPhone 15's USB-C port made the "switch" somewhat formal.
The iMac and its color-matched accessories kept with Lightning until today's new release. The back of the iMac has long featured USB-C ports, but the accessories were charged with USB-C-to-Lightning cables. This leaves the iPhone SE and iPhone 14 as the remaining Lightning-port-ed Apple gear that Apple still sells. Apple's Vision Pro battery pack contains a kind of Lightning-style connector, although not a true Lightning cable. The forthcoming iPhone SE will, given the need to sell it in Europe, almost certainly feature USB-C as well.
As glad as I am to see USB-C finally included in the Magic Mouse (and the other iMac peripherals, which remain color-matched to the iMac you buy them with), it seems like Apple hasn't used this tweaked design as an excuse to fix one of the most glaring design faults found in its products.
The fact that Apple has gone so far to change the port, but not the location, almost seems out of spite. Surely it can't think this was really a user-friendly place to put the port - yet it has stuck with it over the years. Come on Apple, admit you were wrong with this one, and I might even start using your Mice again...
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