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Aug 21, 2023·edited Aug 21, 2023

It sometimes irks me when someone wants to make a point and gets basic technical details wrong. For the Magic Mouse, the older version took AA, not AAA batteries. This isn’t that interesting by itself, but what is much more relevant is that Apple also sold rechargeable AA batteries for the Magic Keyboard, Mouse, and Trackpad. However, what they didn’t do was account for the fact that the discharge curve for NiMH batteries is not the same as alkaline, which would cause the Mac to report low batteries very quickly and persist for months, all while not offering a user-selected option to pick a battery type. Worse, if an alkaline battery leaked into the Keyboard or Trackpad, the batteries would become stuck in the tube, rendering the device useless. Using NiMH batteries, which did not leak (at least, it’s never happened to me) meant dealing with this charge level issue, which was persistently annoying and could not be disabled.

All of this is to say his point about not being intended to be used in a wired fashion for battery reasons is invalidated by the Keyboard 2 and the Trackpad 2, both which can be used constantly connected with accessible ports. The strain relief issue is interesting, but it’s not something that’s as universal as he claims. There are plenty of particularly Logitech mice without custom cords that can be used while wired and charging.

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Oh yea, I totally lost at least one of the old keyboards to battery leaks.

I think his claim about strain relief is that they want any of the cords they make to work for this purpose, I took the picture at the end of the post to be an example of the type of custom cable they don't want to make. Overall, their insistence on *not making wired mice at all* is a bit annoying to me. But then again, I almost exclusively use a trackpad.

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