If that's true Apple has a very low opinion of their average customer.

"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that." -George Carlin

Having a specific vision for how your products will be used and designing them to be used that way doesn’t need to be portrayed as a low opinion of the customer.

The comment I responded to:

> thought that was intentional so people wouldn’t treat it like a wired mouse?

The "specific vision" we're talking about here intentionally makes the product harder to use. There is no technical limitation behind the decision, it was purely for aesthetics. If the comment I responded to is correct, then Apple though that people would _forget_ they purchased a wireless mouse to begin with. C'mon.

I think it's to preserve the battery by not having it plugged in all the time. Also to keep a USB port empty when not in use.

Any company would be right to have a "low" opinion of their average user. Have you seen how the average person uses their computer?

Yes, but I've never seen anyone buy a wireless mouse and... forget it works wirelessly.

Jony Ive power move to force his aesthetic. Very form over function.

I’m not sure you can really even say it’s a case of form over function. It looks silly, not cool or elegant.

Kind of like the omission of arrow keys from the original Mac keyboard was intentional to force people to use the mouse at all.

Fortunately I welded the power of Emacs and was immune to their blandishments!

(actually of course in those days Emacs didn't run on the Mac. The ability to run Emacs convinced me to get a NeXT).

Compare it to the "wireless" keyboard -- everyone I know who has one with a desktop just keeps it plugged in.

I think that's the exact scenario they tried to avoid. The lightning cable is actually pretty stiff, it won't take long for it to break if one could use it pluged in like a wired mouse.

I dislike most things Apple has done recently. But I can understand this one.

It's fine for the trackpad, designed and released together with the mouse, to have the lightning port on the back and be used plugged in, because it doesn't move so there shouldn't be much stress on the cable.

That’s right but it still sucks when the mouse dies and you can’t do anything till you’ve charged it a bit.

You go grab a cap of coffee and by the time you are back it is charged for the rest of the day. This is a perfect example of the problem which is more imagined than real. I'd bet most people making fun of this design never used the said mouse, and those who use it never found placement of the charging port to be an issue.

To be fair, that only happens if you ignore the warnings that should show up days before and aren’t willing to wait a minute for it to charge.

Why should I have to wait, at all? Let me plug it in and keep using it. Best of both worlds.

The solution would have been to allow use while charging, but once battery is full, pop up regular warnings to unplug it to "prevent battery degradation" or some other white lie