On June 19, 2000, Apple demonstrated an unusual computer mouse, the Apple Pro Mouse.
In it, instead of a typical ball, it possessed an optical sensor for tracking movements (then it was still a novelty). In addition, the mouse had no buttons – none. The manipulator was supplied with a computer Power Mac G4 Cube.
A senior design engineer at Sparkfactror Design, who collaborated with Apple, in one of his interviews said that a mouse without buttons owes its appearance to the occasion. It was an unfinished layout of the manipulator, the buttons on which simply did not have time to designate before Steve Jobs came to see the samples and select the best. As a result, he chose this particular mouse for its unique buttonless “design”.
The new manipulator came to users to taste. And this is not surprising, because the previous mouse – Apple USB Mouse (M4848) – was frankly inconvenient, its round shape did not help to put the hand on it blindly at all. Even Steve Jobs himself admitted at the presentation of the “buttonless” tail that the previous one was the worst mouse on the market.
Finally, it is worth noting that the new Apple Pro Mouse still had buttons, or rather one, or more precisely, its entire body was a button that was pressed closer to the beginning.
On the same day, within the framework of the same WWDC, the company from Cupertino also introduced the Power Mac G4 Cube, with which the Apple Pro Mouse will be bundled with it. The computer was also able to attract everyone’s attention. Outwardly, it looked very unusual: a silver inner case only 18 cm long, width and height neatly arranged in a transparent acrylic outer case.
However, the Power Mac G4 Cube was a very unpopular model. Its sales were so small that Apple, having tried all the methods of attracting attention known to it, stopped production of this model less than a year later.
Chief editor of the blog – Erika J. Wells .
