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The Mice That Didn't Make It
Harry writes "For every blockbuster of the mouse world (such as Microsoft and Logitech's big sellers) there have been countless mice that flopped, or never made it to market. Mice shaped like pyramids; mice shaped like Mickey; mice that doubled as numeric keypads or phones. Even one that sat on your steering wheel. I've rounded up some evocative patent drawings on twenty notable examples."
I'm not reading this article because it's on 20 different pages. STOP THAT SHIT.
And it's split across 24 different pages. ... now where are all of the slashdotters who were arguing with me about ad-supported content last night? :)
20 pages for 20 smallish pictures? Really? The site must be desperate for ad revenue.
Don't forget this one. The only manufacturers' mouse which is usually replaced by a 3rd party one within minutes.
.
Trolling is a art,
I particularly enjoyed the "child-friendly" mouse shaped like the head of Tweety Bird, where you click by jabbing his(?) eyes.
. . . http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/5921266/Blue-MandMs-mend-spinal-injuries.html
. . . poor critter . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.
Also, the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Is it just me, or does the mouse on page 4 bear a striking resemblance to Logitech's current line-up of ergonomic mice?
Spread across 24 pages and about as interesting as a dry dog turd. When you submit to slashdot and it gets rejected then some story about loser designs that didn't make it for good reason winds up as front page news it's quite an insult. What's the next article going to be about? Drug addicts that didn't make it to CEO of large tech companies? How about abacus designs that didn't sell? Not inane enough for you? Let's try pocket protector manufacturers that went broke.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
For every blockbuster of the X world there have been countless X that flopped, or never made it to market.
No. Shit.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
the "b" was the typo he was fixing for the demonstration.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Fuck that shit in the ass. I refuse to read something in such a shit layout design for maximum ad views while ignoring a user's needs.
Seriously, 24 pages for 20 nice is a flipping joke.
Okay, now it makes sense.
these are some wacky ass design for mice the hand held trackball design, i have a small travel mice for my laptop a few years ago that can go on this list. It is very similar to this hand held trackball but on a small scale and shape like a tiny gun
I purchased a Logitech Trackman Marble FX a number of years ago for about $60. Logitech discontinued it a long time ago. Personally I think it's the best mouse I have ever used. When friends of mine use the computer though they don't like it. It does take getting used to but it's extremely comfortable. Great for first person shooters. Eventually playing Unreal Tournament killed the right mouse button. I went looking for a replacement online and found some on ebay priced at over $300. I guess I'm not the only one that thinks this mouse rocks, but I'm not about to fork over $300 for a mouse. To keep mine alive I took a button out of a $10 mouse and soldered it into the old one. Someday I hope Logitech will bring this design back in a wireless version. As a side note, I think console systems would be improved if the right analog joystick on the controller was replaced with a trackball. Aiming is next to impossible with a joystick.
....is not a mouse at all. It's the RollerMouse, which lets me mouse without taking my hands off the keyboard. I have used this for 10 years and continue to be amazed that its not the standard in computing.
Let's try pocket protector manufacturers that went broke.
We cannot allow such a travesty to occur. They are too big to fail.
Reply to That ||
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_Law
What do you really expect? The light bulb wasn't perfected on the first try either.
Apple Desktop Bus for the win! Hell, I even liked the original ADB mouse. And those old ADB keyboards... I have nostalgia for those like others do for the Model M.
I neglected to see the "Hardware" tag for this article and immediately assumed the article was about freaks of biological science, the mice that were engineered into crazy shapes but that didn't get the positive press that the mouse-with-ear-on-back (http://meredith007.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/mouse-human-ear.jpg) got. You know, rodents shaped like pyramids, steering wheels, trackball rats. Why, I once saw a mouse genetically engineered to have a little phosphorescent red light on its belly that lit up when ever someone dragged it along a flat surface.
meeses, surely.
What are you, an idiot? That's the plural of moose.
This guy's the limit!
Typo.
s/B/R
"Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country." is a sentence that used to be used a lot in typesetting -- it's exactly 70 characters (including the period), the width of one standard line.
Note that the original quote was "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party", it was part of a typing exercise, not sure if it was originally a political quote...
Why yes, I do have recollection of random factoids from elementary school typing class, why do you ask?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
The pear-shaped, ridged piece of garbage that came with Packard Bells in the 1990s. I know you're surprised-- Packard-Bell made crappy hardware? But instead of durable grey rubber like most decent mice of the time, the ball on this thing was made of some porous black fake-rubber product that disintegrated in about a month on the display model. It's hard to demo a product when it just came out last month and the customers can see the mouse is already broken.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I took one look at the front page, realized that you created 24 pages to show 20 slides, understood that your main point here was maximizing ad revenue, and closed the tab.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
I find myself really wanting one of those number pad mice.
The mouse I got with my 386DX40 was called a Witty Mouse. I think it was rhyming slang though. Sometimes the cursor would move by itself - it was very erratic, but then work normally for a while the next day. Eventually i discovered that the translucent plastic case was a little too transparent - it was my angle-poise lamp shining through the mouse body and affecting the sensor. It worked fine after I painted it ;-)
fnord
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they're not.
the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Fixed that for you. That phrase is supposed to include all 26 letters of the English alphabet. Your version was missing the s.
This space unintentionally left blank.
My biggest complaint is where there is a complete lack of a "printer-friendly" option.
Do you also complain when a web site makes printer-friendly versions of its articles available at a low, low price per month?
It's a mouse which also serves as a model of the Time Cube and can be hung from a key chain.
I wonder if that was going to be 'Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country'. I would be amused if it were - that happens to be the phrase I type whenever I'm testing a new (computer or cell phone) keyboard. I don't know why that phrase became my standard Keyboard Testing Phrase, but I've been using it since my early teens.
I've always wanted a mouse with a joystick where the thumb goes for gaming. Why waste 4 keys when your thumb would be plenty? Also would give you analog control for movement. I'm just too lazy to build one myself.
The real mystery is how Logitech iFeel didn't make it. I got that thing right here but it has no support to OS X.
It is immersion powered which can do little vibrates which everyone goes crazy about these days. "Haptic feedback" is the term I guess.
While I was on Windows, it was a real intutive thing which caused no kind of system instability. I would say "because of software", no it is not the case. Unreal (2?) made use of it and it was the only game I could experience real feedback.
Here is its review from 2001
http://www.dansdata.com/ifeel.htm
BTW, hope current Logitech owners don't go mad at me... I just plugged it to my Mac and it works. 8 years :)
Years ago I had a keyboard that had a trackball mouse built into it just below the space bar. It was fantastic because I could put it on my lap and do all the modern computing I needed. In this day and age of mediacenter PCs and the like I'm shocked that there aren't more keyboard/mouse combos out there. Trying to work an optical mouse on the arm of the sofa just isn't natural. Would it really be so hard to tack a trackpad onto a wireless keyboard?
Uhh, why?
Or the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I seem to remember trying out a mouse like device in the 90's that moved the courser with thought. Whatever happened to those?
The game.
I think it's an R with an underscore representing what we now recognise as a cursor. Looks like a B though.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Number 12...
Actually is not mine.. is my cat's
But the plural of ox is oxen , not "oxes"
Then one fowl is a goose and two are geese
Yet the plural of moose would never be "meese,"
You may find a lone mouse or a whole lot of mice , ,
But the plural of house is houses , not "hice."
If the plural of man is always men
Why shouldnt the plural of pan be "pen"?
Cow in the plural may be cows or kine . .
But the plural of vow is vows , not "vine."
I speak of a foot and you show me your feet
I give you a boot ; would you call a pair "beet"?
If the singular is tooth and the plural teeth , ,
Why shouldnt the plural of booth be "beeth"?
If the singular is this, and the plural is these
Should the plural of kiss rightly be "keese"?
Then, with ONE you use that and with THREE, those , ;
Yet the plural of hat is never called "hose."
We speak of a brother and also of brethren
But though we say mother , we never say "methren."
The masculine pronouns are he, his and him ,
But imagine the feminine as she , "shis," and "shim."
So English, I think -- and you must agree
Is a language as queer as any youll see.
The site must have something going for it, as it is blocked at my workplace.
I think console systems would be improved if the right analog joystick on the controller was replaced with a trackball.
But how big of a trackball? Look at how thin the Wii Classic Controller is. Wouldn't a trackball have to be as small as the trackball in the middle of an Apple Mighty Mouse in order to fit?
I don't have any idea what model it was, but a co-worker used to have a very small HP laptop with a mouse on a little arm that came out the right side of it.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
Absolutely agree. Just watch people struggling with mice and you wonder how 99.9% of educated, wealthy people don't use trackballs as standard.
...if they had included the annotations. Most of them don't really make sense without knowing what (2) is.
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
I'm not going to format this so it's easy to read, I'm tired - so I'm getting straight to the point, I pray there's a billion to once chance a mouse manufacturer is listening.
For high end fingertip gamers (google it) this is the best shaped mouse ever made.
http://www2s.biglobe.ne.jp/~yav/comp/pc/mouse/ltmm3u.jpg
Sadly, no wheel, not optical, old as hell (PS/2!)
All the modern laser or optical mice for gamers are absoloutely and utterly ridiculously huge for fingertip grip gamers, they are far too large or oddly shaped, they are great for browsing, bad for gaming.
I have just purchased this mouse for Warcraft 3 gaming and while it's good - it could do with a thumb button
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&safe=off&ei=F_17SqSJE4vq6APotOVf&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=razer+salmosa&spell=1&start=0
There always seems to be a fear of putting a lot of buttons on a small mouse, it's unfortunate - we don't all have giant hands.
I remember selling a few of a device that was a hand held mouse/game controller (for the Atari 400/800, VIC29 and C=64). It was more like a joystick without a base, just a handle with buttons on the top. Inside were mercury switches that detected when it was tilted.
Since it had no tactile feedback nor accelerometer type detection for greater tilt, it wasn't long before the user started trying harder and harder to make it go faster (especially for games) by tilting it farther and farther, until they eventually (like 15 minutes eventually) turned it upside down and hosed the mercury switches.
I thought it was a pretty cool idea. My employees thought it was a techno-turd. But we all agreed it was hilarious to load up a fast game, plug this thing in, and let a customer play with it. Within minutes they were twisting their arm like a pretzel and dancing around trying to get body language or position to add to the speed, while cussing the device (but refusing to give up).
It really would have been a good hack except for one thing missing -- something to hold it while you typed. When you went two handed at the keyboard you had to lay it down, thereby positioning your cursor at one edge of the screen as well as ruining the merc switches.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
...your "article" over 24 pages? Other submitters go to the trouble of linking a print page to spare us this crap and you link an ad-riddled pos like that on purpose? I don't say that often, but: fuck you.
Ah, the classic Mouseman 96. I loved that thing so much back in my Quake days. I used to collect them so I'd always have a spare, I still have one or two of them tucked away amidst my old PC stuff (although it's quite likely they've already been picked over and scavenged for replacement parts over the years). You could practically forget it was under your hand, it was perfectly shaped and effortless to move.
They did make a USB version called the Wingman but I never tried it; you can still find PS/2 ports on a surprising number of PCs.
ZOMG! Let the paranoia spread on /.
Increase the zoom, it's definitely a B with a cursor underneath.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
... but my favorite mouse ever was just a branded plain-ol' two button, roller-ball mouse. Branded with the underrated 90's Nickelodeon cartoon character Cat-Dog. A Cat-Dog Mouse.
Came to bitch about formatting and ads. Sent them some feedback in "Contact Us" to let them know they failed.
"...if you don't like your job, you don't strike. You just go in every day and do it really half-assed..." -Homer
I've done a bit of B2B work, and eventually, most of my really successful clients start looking into technology investments, and like all tech-related business, they bring me in. I would say that out of the last 100 products I've reviewed for clients, 98 of which required having my lawyer parse through lengthy NDAs, 95 were "input devices", 90 were "mouse replacement" input devices, and 75 have failed- 20 are waiting to fail, 4 are **LONG** shots, and 1 has actually turned a profit. I'm just glad I recommended against everything but the profitable one, with the exception of one extremely qualified recommendation on one of the long shots- (i.e. you have a 2% chance of getting your money back, but if you make it through that lottery, it'll be 200 times what you put in)
Mice are like a gallon jug of milk. Everybody's got one, but they rarely stray from what they are used to when shopping, unless you can really blow somebody out of the water.
I apparently forgot that sig != uptime...
When I was shopping for the mouse I have now, I was in London Drugs and actually SAW the phone/mouse combo! It plugs into the usb port and comes with software so you can use it as a soft-phone.
:p
Doubt they sold many though
A mouse that did not make this story and was the very best mouse of all before there were optical ones was called The HP Wheel Mouse. This mouse from I believe 1990 had two nylon wheels, on its underside, mounted at a 45 degree angle,which where spring loaded, and each touched the pad or table at 90 degrees from the other. The HP wheel mouse was only available in RS-232, and it worked on anything, even upside down, and never got clogged up. Inside it used an optical encoder wheel... I was told that HP sold the patent, when I tried to buy more of them, and the best mouse that you never had to clean, which worked upside down and without a mouse pad disappeared,
I'd prefer to die speaking my mind that live fearing to speake The Internet is the liberty tree