Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber recently discussed the possibility of one day selling a mouse that customers can use “forever.” The executive said such a mouse isn’t “necessarily super far away” and will rely on software updates, likely delivered through a subscription model.
Speaking on a July 29 episode of The Verge’s Decoder podcast, Faber, who Logitech appointed as CEO in October, said that members of a “Logitech innovation center” showed her “a forever mouse” and compared it to a nice but not “super expensive” watch. She said:
I’m not planning to throw that watch away ever. So why would I be throwing my mouse or my keyboard away if it’s a fantastic-quality, well-designed, software-enabled mouse? The forever mouse is one of the things that we’d like to get to.
Having to pay a regular fee for full use of a peripheral could deter customers, though. HP is trying a similar idea with rentable printers that require a monthly fee. The printers differ from the idea of the forever mouse in that the HP hardware belongs to HP, not the user. However, concerns around tracking and the addition of ongoing expenses are similar.>>>>
I have used nothing but Logitech thumb-ball mice for the past 20 years. I love my MX Ergo.
If Logitech ever sells a mouse with a subscription, I don’t care how nice it is, I’ll have my own fucking PCB made and design my own QMK capable mouse before I’ll pay for it.
Just sell me the $90 mouse that lasts 5 years. I refuse to accept mouse feudalism.
I got a “Ploopy” a while back. Open source, QMK powered mouse. Terrible name, but it’s been working like a charm. All components are 3D printed or can be purchased cheaply. No good wireless options right now, though. The power efficient protocols needed are all proprietary afaik.
That’s cool! I only really do thumb-ball mice, though, and I haven’t really seen alternatives to Logitech in the same form-factor. I imagine they might even have a patent on it.
Buuuut I’m betting I can do stuff like repair the couple of MX Ergos I have lying around if I need to if I get motivated about it. Or like, maybe there’s a way I can have replacement parts fabricated or use the shell of a Logitech mouse as the basis for something similar.
You hear that Logitech? Charge me a subscription fee and I will absolutely figure this out and distribute blueprints and repair guides to the whole ass internet. I appreciate your ergonomics, your unifying dongles, your precision mode, and all your hotkeys, but $90 is plenty for a mouse. Don’t get greedy or I will personally bite you in the ass.
Edit: oh duh, the ball isn’t at the thumb.
Edit again: oh wait they do have a thumb ball one. Fixed the link.
Ooohhh, that does look promising! Good to know there’s some kind of viable alternative!
Who pays 90USD for a mouse that lasts only 5 years
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[click click, click click click click] Hmm, why’s it not… Honey, did we pay the mouse bill this month?
Subscription-based hardware should be illegal.
If you’re renting something, you rent it and give it back to be rented out again if you stop paying. There is no common good argument for this remote sabotage bullshit.
“Forever mouse” is a marketing term to sell you a subscription. I’m not going to pay a subscription to get driver updates or to use basic functionality of the mouse. I have a forever keyboard (expensive mechanical keyboard) and it does not require a subscription and I can use the entire functionality without paying ever again.
Expensive mechanical keyboard? I have been using this since the mid 2000’s
Perhaps I am incredibly naive, but for me a “Forever mouse” is something you buy, own, and have control absolute over!
ssm has an idea for a “forever list” of companies he will never buy from
Nobody tell them that generic mouse drivers are part of every USB driver devkit.
They know. And that’s the “problem” they’re trying to “innovate” around.
She can fuck right off with that. I have a mouse that fell apart because it used soft plastic, another one I threw away because I couldn’t clean properly (taking it apart to clean broke something), and now I have one from logitech. My parents have a mouse from (I kid you not) 1995. Brand is unknown. There were already “forever” mice out there, it’s just that now they voluntarily make them shit for you to buy a new one.
Just make mice like 20 years ago but in different forms (vertical, ball at the thumb), that can be opened to clean and repair, and we’re fine. No need for your dumb-ass subscription. Fuck off.
What? Nooo. I don’t want the stupid mouse-balls ever again. Sure i could clean it but i also HAD to. Regularly.
Besides, you’re right. Fuck subscriptions. Fuck logitech, fuck their shitty quality.
This is nothing but rent-seeking.
I love how the community can smell bullshit miles away.
This is as stupid an idea as Wendy’s ‘surge pricing’ nonsense.
Of course this is an idea that the CEO brought up, but if this ever materializes as an actual product, I’ll never buy a Logitech again.
They can’t even make a mouse that doesn’t double click after a year. Dumbass.
I have never had to replace a mouse ever. I swear the mouse I’m using is from the early 2000’s
I’m not planning to throw that watch away ever. So why would I be throwing my mouse or my keyboard away if it’s a fantastic-quality, well-designed, software-enabled mouse?
Because watch technology is mature and isn’t changing. Nobody’s making a better watch every few years.
That generally isn’t true of computer hardware.
In the 1980s, you had maybe a one or two button mouse with mechanical optical encoder rings turned by a ball that gummed up and would stick.
After that:
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A third mouse button showed up
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A scrollwheel showed up
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Optical sensors showed up.
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Better optical sensors showed up, with the ability to function on arbitrary surfaces and dejittering.
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Polling rate improved
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Mice got the ability to go to sleep if not being used.
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More buttons showed up, with mice often having five or more buttons.
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Tilt scrollwheels showed up
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Wireless mice showed up
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Better wireless protocols showed up
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Optical sensor resolutions drastically increased
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Weight decreased
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Foot pads used less-friction-inducing material.
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Several updates happened to track changing ports (on PC, serial, PS/2, USB-A, and probably soon USB-C).
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The transparent mouse bodies that were initially-used on many optical mice (to show off the LED and that they were optical) went away as companies figured out that people did not want to have flashing red mice. (I was particularly annoyed by this, modded a trackball that used a translucent ball to use a near-infrared LED back in the day).
If wristwatches had improved like that over the past 40 years, you likely wouldn’t be keeping an older one either.
If you think that there isn’t going to be any more change in mice, okay, maybe you can try selling people on the same mouse for a long time. I’m skeptical.
- A third mouse button showed up
- A scrollwheel showed up
- Optical sensors showed up.
- Better optical sensors showed up
- Polling rate improved
… and then everybody joined me in thinking that this would be a good place to stop and actively avoided the continued attempts to sell us on new features that further complicate things.
I don’t personally go down the wireless mouse route – in fact, in general, I’d rather not use wireless and especially Bluetooth devices, due to reliability, latency, security, needing-to-worry-about-battery-charge, and privacy (due to broadcasting a unique ID that any nearby cell phone will relay the position of to Google, Apple, or similar). But I’d say that aside from that, most of those are advantageous, and a lot of people out there don’t care (or don’t know about) wireless drawbacks, so for them, even those are a win.
The main complexity item I can think of is the buttons. Maybe back in the day, few set up Mouse Button #5 to be “drag window” in their window manager, as I did, so I could drag windows anywhere rather than on their titlebar. However, the browser “back” and “forward” functionality that I believe is the default in all desktop environments these days seems pretty easily-approachable.
Yeah it is mostly the extra buttons that annoy me personally, I don’t really know why. I have better ways of doing the things you mention but I’m sure there could theoretically be some use for them. I’ve played games where they might’ve been useful, but it seems like no software is designed to rely on them and I always found their placement made it too easy to hit them by accident. Maybe my hands are the wrong shape or something.
I haven’t hit that, but one thing that might help if you don’t like that – you might be able to set it up such that they only operate in your environment when chorded – like, when you hit multiple buttons at the same time. Like, only have “left click plus back” send “back” and “left click plus forward” send “forward”, or something akin to that.
These days, I use sway on Linux, which provides for a tiled desktop environment – the computer sets the size of windows, which are mostly fullscreen, and I don’t drag windows. But when I did, and before mice had the convention of using “back” and “forward” on Button 4 and Button 5, I really liked having the single-button-to-drag-anywhere functionality, though I never really found a use for the fifth button. If I were still using a non-tiled environment, I’d probably look into doing chording or something so that I could still do my “drag anywhere on the window” thing.
I’m an Xfce user, in the habit of dragging windows around with the “super” key + left mouse button.
For instant access to the browser back button, I have it positioned in the far top-left corner so that just swiping the mouse in that direction hits it without having to look at it. Unless it’s on the other monitor, which is mildly annoying when it happens but you know, probably not by enough to change my decades-old habit of buying the cheapest and simplest mouse that’s easily available and looks like it might not fall apart in a week, much the same way as I tend to shop for socks: reluctantly, when it’s necessary.
Most of those changes to mice make very little difference to regular users. And the low-priced mice most people use aren’t so different from the old ones. Wireless is a mixed blessing because it comes with having to recharge a battery which is often not replaceable. Polling rate and DPI is only of interest to niche users. Most people probably never tilt the wheel. So for many an old wired mouse will still do fine.
Anyway, Logitech’s “forever mouse”, if it’s really forever, doesn’t really fit with the idea that mouse technology evolves enough that you need to replace the mouse every few years. That said, it’s probably the subscription that’s forever, not the mouse.
In watches, smart watches are new and still developing, and some of them already have “premium” subscription services.
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