You Unfortunately Can’t Fix the Apple Magic Mouse’s Idiotic Charging Port Placement Through Clever Engineering

Although firms like Apple by no means do something by chance, customers have been perplexed when Apple revealed its Magic Mouse 2 again in 2015 with the charging port inconveniently positioned beneath it. It’s a difficulty that also plagues the mouse seven years later, and it’s apparently a difficulty that Apple is set to protect for years to return, as Matty Benedetto discovered.

Benedetto is finest identified on-line for the YouTube channel, Unnecessary Inventions, the place, because the title implies, they function innovations the world doesn’t actually need. That contains the whole lot from an iPhone case that shops and shoots sweet right into a person’s mouth, to a weird method to a standing workspace with elongated keyboard keys as an alternative of a raised desk.

Like many different loyal Apple customers, Benedetto loves most issues concerning the Mighty Mouse 2, besides that when its rechargeable battery dies, it must be flipped over and rendered unusable to be able to cost. So by the facility of willpower, 3D printing, and YouTube clicks, they designed what they assumed can be a intelligent resolution to the issue.

Starting with a Lightning charging cable that includes a right-angle connector on the tip, Benedetto designed and 3D printed a lifter for the again of the Magic Mouse 2 that rolls round on a pair of steel ball bearings. The elevate permits the mouse to nonetheless slide round a desk whereas it’s linked to an influence supply and recharging, but it surely seems Benedetto’s ingenuity was no match for Apple’s willpower.

The drawback they instantly found was a easy however baffling one: when the Mighty Mouse 2 is linked to an influence supply, it stops working. It recharges simply positive, however the remainder of it simply shuts down till the Lightning charging cable is disconnected. Why is that this the case when Apple’s wi-fi keyboards preserve working whereas a charging cable is hooked up? Apple claims {that a} two-minute cost, or roughly the time it takes to stroll to the water cooler and again, provides the Mighty Mouse 2 9 hours of energy, so the charging port woes aren’t actually that huge of a difficulty. But from our personal testing we’ve discovered that’s merely not the case, and when a Magic Mouse 2 dies, it truly requires a number of two minute fees all through the day to maintain it working.

To Apple’s credit score, lately it’s been addressing and fixing a number of questionable design selections, together with its problematic laptop computer keyboards, eliminating the Touch Bar, and even packing the brand new Mac Studio stuffed with helpful ports. So there’s nonetheless hope that the Magic Mouse 2 will get its act collectively, or that the Magic Mouse 3 will assist us neglect these darkish instances.