Rant about the Apple ‘Mighty’ Mouse Failures

I’ve owned a wireless Apple Mighty Mouse, now just called the ‘Apple Mouse’ due to trademark issues, since December of 2008. In that time, I’ve come to rely on the mouse for everything. However, there is one major issue with the mouse: the scroll wheel.

wireless.mighty.mouse

The Apple Mighty Mouse has the most abhorred and useless item on any mouse. The scroll wheel has a tendency to get dirty due to use, which is understandable, yet there is no way to actually clean the scroll wheel.

The major issue I’ve been having is that sometimes the scroll wheel will stop working in one direction. Whether it be up or down depends upon the mood of the mouse. Take today for instance, the scroll down function decided not to work any longer, while last week it was the ability to scroll up that stopped.

Now this has probably been rectified by the Apple Magic Mouse and its touch-sensitive technology. However this is hardly helpful for those of us who have the Apple Mighty Mouse. This does not help in terms of user-serviceable parts.

In contrast to the way that Apple does things, almost every ‘PC Mouse’ manufacturer allows access to the innards of a PC mouse in order to clean out dust and dirt that gets into the scroll wheel area. It is typically two screws, lift off the cover, clean the area, put the cover back on, replace the screws and it is good to go for another year or so.

Apple has not had a very good track record with their mice. Like the puck mouse. I think Apple should stop manufacturing mice all together and contract with another company like Microsoft or Logitech, or even Razer to manufacturer their mice.

I may try one of the Apple Magic Mice, but I may just end up buying the Microsoft Bluetooth mobile Keyboard and the Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook mouse.

Image Source from Chris Mear

I'm into everything technology related, particularly anything Apple related. I enjoy programming and tend to lean towards server-based technologies over client-based. You can contact me on twitter, via e-mail, or follow me on friendfeed.