I posit that a mouse that needs to be on its back to be charged, thus rendering it completely useless during that time, to be much much much worse than a round mouse with no immediate indication which way is forward...
I heard they didn't want it to be functional while charging because then people would use it plugged in all the time. They wanted it to be clear that it takes a little time to charge, then you use it unplugged. Might make more sense if there were battery level LEDs on the top or something. But it's just a couple reminders and then bang it's dead.
Can’t let people use it the way they want to now can we? They gotta use it the way I want them
That’s the kind of attitude that gets you laptops with no ports and keyboards that don’t work.
Well, my Ive-cursed 2016 MacBook Pro had 4 (!) ThunderBolt/USB-C ports, which I kind of miss (though you had to use one of them for charging, you could also charge from either side). It was both thinner and lighter than recent 16" MacBook Pro models (but with ~5 hour battery life.)
It also had a semi-useful touchbar, no actual physical ESC key, a terrible "butterfly" keyboard that was replaced twice, and a large trackpad that had terrible palm rejection until they eventually fixed it.
So mostly not great, but I miss the form factor and those 4 TB/USB-C ports. I dream about having more of them.
It takes a half hour to get months of charge back, so it’s not a functional problem. I think you wanted to have a wireless mouse with a port in the back so it feels like a wired mouse when you want it to. That would have been cool but I suspect a standard usb cable wouldn’t be rated for being continually contorted and wouldn’t be as pleasant as a wired mouse wire designed for that, so you’d need a special wire and it was just not going to work.
Even if it is half an hour, that's half an hour of /no functionality/ - whether that is acceptable to you is a personal decision, but to claim it's not a functional problem is a lie.
My Sony wireless headphones have a similar issue. They cannot be used (with Bluetooth / ANC) when charging. My ReDragon USB mouse does not have that issue - it has a standard USB-C port on the front edge and I only need to charge it every few weeks, which is far less often than I charge a phone, so insertion cycles is not a concern.
I had some Skullcandy bluetooth headphones I liked, and when the foam started to go, I bought the new model of the same product. The new ones instantly disconnect when charging, so you can't listen with them wired to a charger/power bank. Why???
I wonder if these are safety modifications. Batteries get hot when you charge them, which is uncomfortable in and of itself, but the added source of both thermal and electrical energy while under load might make thermal runaway situations more dangerous.
> That would have been cool but I suspect a standard usb cable wouldn’t be rated for being continually contorted
I doubt that had anything to do with it. I've had multiple Magsafe cables that spend their entire existence in one spot on a desk (even using cable guides to keep them sitting within a few millimeters) do some bizarre "paper lanterning" of the rubber at the connector, and I'm far from the only one.
Let's be absolutely real. The port on the back would have ruined Ive's militance on sleekness and that was the reason it wasn't included. Form over function.