For some people, small, beautiful events is what life is all about!

— Doctor Who: Earthshock, Peter Davison as the 5th Doctor (Story 122)

 

 

 

 

 

 

A tad off course, but today, I was just wow’ed by my Apple Magic Touch mouse.

Why do you ask?

Because of the beauty of industrial design and the wonderful merge of function and form.  The mouse itself is quite sleek and low profile and I like using the multi-gesture swipes all within the the comfort of a few finger moves.

 

But the thing that got my attention was the inside of the mouse and how it works.  When the mouse was running low on power, it did so in an unobtrusive fashion, the mouse still worked but the gestures didn’t operate any more.  So it didn’t fill up my laptop screen real estate with an unnecessary dialog box nor did it wait until the battery was completely out of power.  Instead, I could still use it but didn’t have the convenience of the multi-gesture swipes – I could still do my work but it also reminded me that the mouse was running low on power.  To quickly check, one quick turn over to the back and sure enough the light was red so I knew what the problem was.

 

But what made it even nicer was that opening up the mouse, it was not the usual hanging springs and half enclosed case, but it was a fully enclosed battery case with metal covers around the springs to ensure that the springs do not get damaged.

 

Yes, its a nerdy thing to point out – but whether its about Analysis Services I/O, Hadoop performance, …. or a mouse, it is all about the little things inside – i.e. how well you design and engineer it – that count.