Blog/Why Apple should hand back every design award it’s ever won

7th June 2021

Apple Mac products are known for not only working brilliantly, but being beautifully designed, and wonderfully ergonomic.

They took the personal computer that, at the time, looked like it belonged next to the foot spa and the electric car battery charger that you keep in the garage, and turned it into a status symbol – a tactile, desirable household item that you were proud to display in your living room or study, atop your stylish furniture, alongside your ornaments & photos of your loved ones.

Apple’s USP is that their products don’t prioritise form over function – they manage to combine form WITH function, and that’s why much of what they produce – think iTunes, iPod, iPad, iMac, OS – are game changers.

And for it – alongside a huge market share, and huge profits – they have received many plaudits. People love Apple designed kit, and they have quite rightly won design award after design award as the industry recognises the quality of its products.

However, in the design of the Magic Mouse 2/3, they’ve done something so heinous that – like when Milli Vanilli were caught miming instantly losing all credibility, their recording contract and their fans – should mean Apple are forced to hand back all of their design awards, and share out a significant part of their profits among charities of the choosing of customers who have had to struggle in the face of their terrible form-over-functionism.

For, as any designer or Mac user who has had to stop work to recharge their Magic Mouse will know, Apple haven’t put its charging port on the front of the Magic Mouse as would seem natural and that would allow you to continue working with the mouse tethered to your computer, charging as you go, annoyingly, they’ve put it on the very bottom of the mouse so that it’s impossible to continue working while charging.

For the life of me I can’t think of a reason why they’d do this, other than that it’d spoil the Magic Mouse’s clean lines to put it at the front, and they prioritised its aesthetics over its usability.

Hopefully with the introduction of the Magic Mouse 4 Apple will have come up with a solution, whether it’s a better location for the port, or in true Apple style a system for wireless charging that could keep your wireless keyboard, mouse and iPhone charged while they sit on your desk untethered.

If they were to do that, and the current Magic Mouse turned out to be a stepping stone from battery power to true wireless charging then I think we’d all forgive Apple, but failing that, I’m sending a van round to Infinite Loop Cupertino, CA and I expect Tim Cook to load up all those design awards, ready to be taken back to where they came from.