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Vladimir_Chrootin t1_ixr01fo wrote

I used the original Apple mouse pictured in the late 1980s.

It was terrible. It was just so bad, even by the standards of the day. Fully mechanical, (rather than opto-mechanical), so it would stutter across the pad in a jerky motion, and it had one button at a time when two or three was already standard on other platforms.

They got away with it because most customers had never used a computer before and didn't realise just how hard it sucked.

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Karmakazee t1_ixr16me wrote

Did anyone even make an optical-mechanical mouse in the 80’s? I thought that was early 2000’s tech.

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Vladimir_Chrootin t1_ixr4c91 wrote

Yes, pretty much everyone did by the late '80s, including Apple - the mouse second from the left is an opto-mechanical mouse that replaced it and was becoming standard on new Macs by that time (the ones these mice were plugged into were mainly Mac and Mac Plus models, getting a little obsolete by that point).

I had a Kensington trackball on a PC at the time, which plugged into a serial port (PS/2 didn't really start to proliferate on new PCs until about 1990), and I also used the three-button mouse on the Acorn Archimedes.

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wewbull t1_ixu6r9y wrote

Oh yes. Atari ST and Amiga mice were all opto-mechanical.

Optical mice first started early 90s (with special mouse pads) for things like Sun workstations.

At least, that was my experience.

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Mupp99 t1_iy72101 wrote

Atari ST mice were terrible when new and only got worse as they aged.

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