You don't have to flip this Magic Mouse hack over to charge
William GallagherIvan Kuleshov''s hacked Magic Mouse
An engineer has hacked Apple's Magic Mouse to give it a USB-C charging port — in a better place — and also given it a more ergonomic case.
Ivan Kuleshov has previously hacked Apple's Mac mini to be powered over Ethernet, and has now reworked the Magic Mouse. Basically unchanged since its 2009 debut, the Magic Mouse has been criticized chiefly for how it can't be used while being charged.
That charging was and still is done by a Lightning cable — despite expectations of a change to USB-C — and it's done with a connector on the underside of the mouse.
Kuleshov has addressed that, but also worked on the other occasional criticism that the Magic Mouse is ergonomically awkward. Together, these issues mean that the Magic Mouse has been described as one of the worst of Jony Ive's designs.
In Kuleshov's new design, Apple's Magic Mouse appears to simply sit in a wider, deeper base. In practice, there's a lot more engineering work involved to make that happen, and it included wiring the battery connectors "so the mouse doesn't turn off while charging."
How it works pic.twitter.com/77oh7eM9kN
— Ivan Kuleshov (@Merocle) November 16, 2023
As well as the demo of the revamped Magic Mouse in use, the complete thread on Twitter/X shows multiple different casing designs that Kuleshov tried. Plus he details the steps needed to make a USB-C connector that lets users continue working with the mouse while charging.
Kuleshov says he will release all of the specifications and details on GitHub shortly.
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57 Comments
you also just don't have to use the magic mouse, as it's about as far from magic as there can be for a mouse.
Yet again a clever proof of concept. He’s basically created a “magic shoe” for the Magic Mouse that allows the mouse to be used while charging. It works. But it’s pretty obvious from the implementation why Apple never chose to go down this path. It’s design and aesthetics are okay from a mouse-in-a-shoe perspective, but Apple (at least with Jony Ive at the helm of the design team) would never have allowed this to be labeled as an Apple product. It’s too large, bulky, and reminiscent of mouse designs you can get from many other vendors for $29.99.
Whether you liked Jony’s approach or not, he always stuck to his guns and saw that his vision for a product met his design and aesthetic goals. Anything that deviated too far from what he envisioned was seen as a failure. One can argue that what comes across as a single-minded and arguably narrow focus on the primary functionality, like using the device and how it feels in the hand, led to functional compromises when it came to ancillary functionality, like charging the device. The Magic Mouse is imo pleasant and efficient to use, but yeah, there is no getting over the clunky recharging scenario. The rationale must have been something like “you obviously only recharge the device while you’re not using it.” This makes perfect sense only until it doesn’t.
It only takes a few minutes to get 8-9 hours of charge using the port on the bottom. The complaints about the location were always inane.
So much effort and expense just to avoid turning it over and plugging it in while you get a cup of tea.