Apple USB Mouse (Hockey Puck)
Cute doesn’t mean practical. Dubbed the “Hockey Puck” for its odd circular shape, the Apple USB Mouse was a tragically flawed peripheral. Instead of making a tried-and-true ordinary mouse with two clickers, Apple’s first-ever USB mouse had a single button at the top of its Roomba-shaped housing.
The design was simply terrible. The shape couldn’t have been less ergonomic, and since it didn’t have an obvious top and bottom, orienting your cursor was unnecessarily tedious. The cord was too short, the mouse was too small, and it wasn’t built particularly well, either. Apple slapshot the hockey puck out of existence after two years.
Here is what Gizmodo alum Sam Rutherford had to say about the mouse:
“But the truly worst thing about the original iMac was its mouse. Seemingly designed purely for looks, Apple’s one-button monstrosity is possibly the least ergonomic peripheral I’ve ever used. It felt like you were trying to move the cursor around by pushing a hockey puck, and even though in hindsight I appreciate Apple’s use of a cord sporting USB, the cable on the iMac G3’s mouse was hilariously short, too.”
