The other day, in Ireland, in our innovation center there, one of our team members showed me a forever mouse with the comparison to a watch. This is a nice watch, not a super expensive watch, but 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.
What made the mouse a forever mouse?
It was a little heavier, it had great software and services that you’d constantly update, and it was beautiful. So I don’t think we’re necessarily super far away from that.
I’m still stuck on, “You’re going to sell me a mouse once and it’s going to have ongoing software updates forever.”
Imagine it’s like your Rolex. You’re going to really love that.
I’m going to ask this very directly. Can you envision a subscription mouse?
Possibly.
And that would be the forever mouse?
Yeah.
So you pay a subscription for software updates to your mouse.
Yeah, and you never have to worry about it again, which is not unlike our video conferencing services today.
But it’s a mouse.
But it’s a mouse, yeah.
I think consumers might perceive those to be very different.
[Laughs] Yes, but it’s gorgeous. Think about it like a diamond-encrusted mouse.
The forever mouse, and the forever mouse could be the mouse that you keep and we just send you software updates, but it could also be the mouse that you turn in at Best Buy and we get it back or Best Buy takes it back and refurbs and resells it, which is another business model. We’re starting to do that but not yet at the scale that we need to.
Macros/reprogramability/DPI changes. In theory they could improve the macros. But like macros should be a pretty solved problem at this point.
Doesn’t the universal HID standard cover all that? It removed the need for frickin drivers, but I guess we’re going back with all the rgb spyware
Macros and DPI settings? No.
The mouse will still work, but you’re stuck with the default settings. The mouse still uses the generic driver, it’s just the software reprograms the mouse to do your macros, or run at a non insane DPI.
Depends on the mouse I guess, which of course they’ll try to make as complicated as possible to seem like they’re doing something hard. There’s really no difference between a mouse and a keyboard from a HID perspective. The DPI setting generally only change how the mouse movements are interpreted inside the mouse, rather than fundamentally change how it’s reported over the wire.
I have seen some mice which have dpi switch hardware buttons. I guess it’s not gonna be as granular as a slider, but still. As for macros, I think it would be okay if it was controlled by the host OS.
I do see your point, though. But I’d rather it become a part of the standard than having to install crappy software
