Wednesday 8 December 2010

MacFAIL!

When my 'vintage' iMac turned tits up near the end of October, I hadda get another one. I bought one of these with a so-called Magic Mouse.

Wireless, no buttons, disconcerting swipe and scroll functions (that I haven't figured out how to turn off), but pretty groovy nonetheless.

It looks like this:



It came with batteries loaded. I didn't realize that I could monitor battery strength and after about three weeks, I got a 'low battery' message. I thought: 'OK, bum batteries from the factory'.

No batteries in the joint -- it takes 2 AAs -- so in the next couple of days, I bought a pack of 4. Batteries failed, I replaced.

About three weeks after that, a couple of days ago, I got 'low battery' message again. WTF?

I investigated. And indeed, the Magic Mouse has some serious fucking issues with battery life.

I've been a Mac user my entire computer life. I love its design, its intuitive engineering.

But this is a total FAIL. And should be addressed by the big brains at Apple.

4 comments:

Saskboy said...

My iPod Touch needed charging about every 3 days on version 2.2 of its iOS. With iOS4, it needs charging after less than a day and a half. It's brutal, even given the extra features in the OS.

WILLY said...

Turn the Magic Mouse off and then set favorites under Blue Tooth for the Mouse to speed up reconnect when restarted.

See this discussion forum http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2217647 which seems like the best of the many on this issue.

Other than that go tethered and live without magic

Anonymous said...

I’ve had the same issues with the Magic Mouse (and wireless keyboard) since buying. It's not even necessarily that the ‘low battery’ means the batteries are exhausted before it stops working.

Going through batteries constantly I bought a strength tester and it revealed once they reach the halfway point is when the mouse typically ceases working. I’ve replaced the Mouse with the store twice, if it keeps up next I’ll simply buy rechargeable batteries for it.

fern hill said...

This morning I tried my old cord-ful mouse. Works. So that's what I'm going to do when these batteries fail. Easy-peasy. Fuck Magic Mouse.

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