> Microsoft was far from the first company to incorporate optical tracking into a mouse. The approach dates back as far as 1980 when a pair of inventors came up with two different approaches to tracking mouse movements through imaging.
Of course, the point is that most of us still were not using an optical mouse at that time, and as you pointed out, this new mainstream mouse worked on more common surfaces. So it still changed how we use mice, en masse.
> Microsoft was far from the first company to incorporate optical tracking into a mouse. The approach dates back as far as 1980 when a pair of inventors came up with two different approaches to tracking mouse movements through imaging.
Of course, the point is that most of us still were not using an optical mouse at that time, and as you pointed out, this new mainstream mouse worked on more common surfaces. So it still changed how we use mice, en masse.