Maybe it’s because I’m just recovering from attending my 35-year college reunion, but I had a memory return of being in the college computer lab and telling someone to use the mouse to move the cursor, so they picked it up and waved it in the air.
That Star Trek IV scene was a reminder that a computer mouse isn’t as universally intuitive of a device as it might seem.
(And on a tangentially-related note—I’ve been driving a Ford Mustang convertible this weekend and the fact that some screens are touch screens and some are not has been a bit of a source for confusion to me. I think I don’t have the same issue with my Prius because there the steering-wheel cursor keys control a screen that’s on a different plane from the main dashboard. Also, I really miss my radar cruise control.)
> Maybe it’s because I’m just recovering from attending my 35-year college reunion, but I had a memory return of being in the college computer lab and telling someone to use the mouse to move the cursor, so they picked it up and waved it in the air.
I've seen this behavior in people that have seen other people use mouses for over a decade before, especially my Mom. It's my personal universal sign to immediately stop teaching that person anything. If you get shown a mouse move across a table like a pug, get explained that moving it up and down, left and right is a relative motion and you pick it up and wave it in the air you are just signaling that you do not want to learn.
My mom and her friends pestered me for years as a teen to show them how computers work and how to use them. When I tried to teach them the basics they were dismissive as if the computer had to conform to their way of thinking how the interaction should work. I learned to not engage with those people at all. Funnily enough, a decade later after they actually wanted to learn it they figured it out themselves.
Late 90s/early 00s, I tried to show my grandmother how to play cars on my Performa 5200. Her natural hand position — presumably from a lifetime of pen use — rotated it 90°, which meant the mouse movement absolutely did not follow her wrist movement.
I rented a Toyota Camry for a week. I didn't like the implementation of radar cruise control - we were driving in the hills around San Luis Obispo and the car ahead would go around a bend, the car would speed up, we'd go around the bend and the car would slam on the brakes.
I guess that if it'd been a hybrid that things would have been better since it could use regeneration rather than braking. I love adaptive cruise control in my Bolt.
For folks looking to running speech to text locally(in the context of dictation) and dont want to do a subscription there are a few apps that run whisper large turbo locally (optimized to run really fast on apple silicon).
I’m the author of the post and will also be releasing an open source speech to text app in the coming weeks. It’s what I’ve been using for months, but packaging it for people
It’s going to be extremely simple, and hopefully easy enough to use. MIT licensed, free
I've looked at the codebase. The ones I listed do a significant amount of audio processing to get better transcripts, avoid the "Thank you" issues with whisper large turbo, handle bluetooth and noisy environments.
Hopefully VoiceInk gets there. It is a neat project and really well done for a first time dev but rough around the edges. Careless is ~20$ and if you just need dictation is the best option.
Yes. It's incredible to me that this project seems to have been completed without knowledge or any intent to replicate this scene, that it seems to be entirely coincidental.
The Magic Mouse's charging port always gets memed on but to be honest that's the least offensive thing about it, since the battery goes for months between charges. The real problem is that it has some of the worst ergonomics of any input device on the market today for absolutely no reason besides aesthetics. If they moved the charging port it would still be a terrible mouse.
Agreed. I would call Apple's Magic Mouse the worst mouse of all time if it didn't have the cool feature of working as both a trackpad and a mouse. Haven't really seen that elsewhere
Even excluding the puck mouse, I'm sure there are worse mice than the Magic Mouse. It's still not a great product though. Technically it might be pretty clever, but the only way that can parse QA is if Apple exclusively hires testers with really small hands.
It doesn't matter that there's a trackpad on the top, because you can't use it. You'll need to curl your fingers to an uncomfortable degree and there's to little traction beneath the mouse to prevent it from slipping when using the trackpad functionality.
My guess is that the Magic Mouse needs to be close to 50% larger, certainly taller.
The Magic Trackpad however... I hope they never stop making those. That is the best input device anyone ever made. It's large, stable, precise and just a joy to use.
The Apple Desktop Bus Mouse II was pretty bad, worse than these. It frequently got dirty and wasn't ergonomic.
The Sun optical mice managed to be both annoying and clever - they didn't get too dirty but the effect was often the same, skipping around when they should have been smooth.
I was a fan of the Logitech TrackMan marble. (I preferred the one with the thumb wheel).
It’s a kind of nice feature, but I’ve been a solid magic trackpad user instead since they first introduced the whole magic keyboard/trackpad/mouse set of accessories.
The author said their aim was to "be nondestructive to this Apple mouse", and would it truly be an Apple mouse if it didn't have at least one questionable design decision?
But, in all seriousness, I'm impressed that they were able to do this non-destructively.
> would it truly be an Apple mouse if it didn't have at least one questionable design decision?
I don’t know if you consider a single button a questionable decision, but the ADB II mouse was as close to perfect as the technology was able to support when it was released.
their classic mice weren't horrible, but from the puck on the original imacs (so like 98ish?) and everything after has been absolutely horrible on ergonomics.
It's super clear that they don't view the traditional mouse as the intended interface to their system and expect you to use the trackpad.
I just recently dabbled in STT as a way to control my computer. Unfortunately, i dont know if i will continue working on it, because it quickly revealed that our current GUI configuration and how we operate our systems, just dont "flow" well with Speech to Text and operations one might expect. I think id need some additional ML or something, in order to even partly go any further forward in that project.
Sure, I can add to the program I have currently to make it handle "any" task, but, with how we currently operate computers, and view content, there is not a way to avoid touching the keyboard and mouse entirely. Tbh im not even sure what i could propose to improve the gui for controlling the system star trek style.
This is really cool, I love the simplicity of just flashing ZMK on it. Initially I thought it was an ESP32 Xiao, and got excited, but alas. Excellent project, either way!
I love it! "Computer...Ah, hello computer!" immediately comes to mind.
Maybe it’s because I’m just recovering from attending my 35-year college reunion, but I had a memory return of being in the college computer lab and telling someone to use the mouse to move the cursor, so they picked it up and waved it in the air.
That Star Trek IV scene was a reminder that a computer mouse isn’t as universally intuitive of a device as it might seem.
(And on a tangentially-related note—I’ve been driving a Ford Mustang convertible this weekend and the fact that some screens are touch screens and some are not has been a bit of a source for confusion to me. I think I don’t have the same issue with my Prius because there the steering-wheel cursor keys control a screen that’s on a different plane from the main dashboard. Also, I really miss my radar cruise control.)
> Maybe it’s because I’m just recovering from attending my 35-year college reunion, but I had a memory return of being in the college computer lab and telling someone to use the mouse to move the cursor, so they picked it up and waved it in the air.
I've seen this behavior in people that have seen other people use mouses for over a decade before, especially my Mom. It's my personal universal sign to immediately stop teaching that person anything. If you get shown a mouse move across a table like a pug, get explained that moving it up and down, left and right is a relative motion and you pick it up and wave it in the air you are just signaling that you do not want to learn.
My mom and her friends pestered me for years as a teen to show them how computers work and how to use them. When I tried to teach them the basics they were dismissive as if the computer had to conform to their way of thinking how the interaction should work. I learned to not engage with those people at all. Funnily enough, a decade later after they actually wanted to learn it they figured it out themselves.
Neither of my parents have figured out that you only need to double click files and folders, not everything. It's been 25 years.
Yeah sounds similar. You cannot get there without a deep refusal of trying to understand.
Late 90s/early 00s, I tried to show my grandmother how to play cars on my Performa 5200. Her natural hand position — presumably from a lifetime of pen use — rotated it 90°, which meant the mouse movement absolutely did not follow her wrist movement.
> really miss my radar cruise control.
Why would you buy a car that didn't have that, or better technology?
"this weekend"
Presumably it's a rental.
I rented a Toyota Camry for a week. I didn't like the implementation of radar cruise control - we were driving in the hills around San Luis Obispo and the car ahead would go around a bend, the car would speed up, we'd go around the bend and the car would slam on the brakes.
I guess that if it'd been a hybrid that things would have been better since it could use regeneration rather than braking. I love adaptive cruise control in my Bolt.
Ah, missed that, thanks. still, it's not like rental places don't have a choice of cars
"How quaint." You're not alone. That would be the first thing I said to that mouse as well.
Exactly my first thought as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkqiDu1BQXY
We're living in the 80s version of the future. We have Star Trek today.
For folks looking to running speech to text locally(in the context of dictation) and dont want to do a subscription there are a few apps that run whisper large turbo locally (optimized to run really fast on apple silicon).
1. https://goodsnooze.gumroad.com/l/macwhisper (dictation + transcription)
2. https://carelesswhisper.app (does dictation only, and does it really well; cheapest)
3. https://superwhisper.com (both local and hosted models + lots of bells and whistles, but much higher pricing)
I’m the author of the post and will also be releasing an open source speech to text app in the coming weeks. It’s what I’ve been using for months, but packaging it for people
It’s going to be extremely simple, and hopefully easy enough to use. MIT licensed, free
Here’s super fast and cheap alternative to Superwhisper:
https://whispertype.com
You forgot about https://tryvoiceink.com/
19 Dollar and Open-Source.
I've looked at the codebase. The ones I listed do a significant amount of audio processing to get better transcripts, avoid the "Thank you" issues with whisper large turbo, handle bluetooth and noisy environments.
Hopefully VoiceInk gets there. It is a neat project and really well done for a first time dev but rough around the edges. Careless is ~20$ and if you just need dictation is the best option.
Do any of these support streaming dictation, to show text progressively while dictating?
Scotty in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home picking up a Macintosh mouse and saying "computer"
Yes. It's incredible to me that this project seems to have been completed without knowledge or any intent to replicate this scene, that it seems to be entirely coincidental.
Who sees an original mouse and thinks "speech recognition" without this classic context?
Same. I did like 5 text searches in the article to see if I had missed it somehow
My first thought as well!
Here's the scene for those who are unaware: https://youtu.be/90eg_erObDo?si=E0ZbU_k-H7ANLqcZ&t=179
The movie is so corny, but remains my favorite!
Was mildly disappointed that there wasn't a microphone in this project. Still pretty cool though.
Another Apple mouse with the charging connector on the bottom side ...
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jwU1ZvVFMXw
The Magic Mouse's charging port always gets memed on but to be honest that's the least offensive thing about it, since the battery goes for months between charges. The real problem is that it has some of the worst ergonomics of any input device on the market today for absolutely no reason besides aesthetics. If they moved the charging port it would still be a terrible mouse.
Agreed. I would call Apple's Magic Mouse the worst mouse of all time if it didn't have the cool feature of working as both a trackpad and a mouse. Haven't really seen that elsewhere
Even excluding the puck mouse, I'm sure there are worse mice than the Magic Mouse. It's still not a great product though. Technically it might be pretty clever, but the only way that can parse QA is if Apple exclusively hires testers with really small hands.
It doesn't matter that there's a trackpad on the top, because you can't use it. You'll need to curl your fingers to an uncomfortable degree and there's to little traction beneath the mouse to prevent it from slipping when using the trackpad functionality.
My guess is that the Magic Mouse needs to be close to 50% larger, certainly taller.
The Magic Trackpad however... I hope they never stop making those. That is the best input device anyone ever made. It's large, stable, precise and just a joy to use.
It's better than the puck mouse and Mighty Mouse at least
The Apple Desktop Bus Mouse II was pretty bad, worse than these. It frequently got dirty and wasn't ergonomic.
The Sun optical mice managed to be both annoying and clever - they didn't get too dirty but the effect was often the same, skipping around when they should have been smooth.
I was a fan of the Logitech TrackMan marble. (I preferred the one with the thumb wheel).
I vastly, vastly prefer my Mighty Mouse to the Magic Mouse.
It’s a kind of nice feature, but I’ve been a solid magic trackpad user instead since they first introduced the whole magic keyboard/trackpad/mouse set of accessories.
I think Microsoft had some kind of a curved mouse that did that?
It’s fine if you only use it for a few minutes a day (executive desk). If you care about ergonomic, you have to get used to weirdness.
The author said their aim was to "be nondestructive to this Apple mouse", and would it truly be an Apple mouse if it didn't have at least one questionable design decision?
But, in all seriousness, I'm impressed that they were able to do this non-destructively.
> would it truly be an Apple mouse if it didn't have at least one questionable design decision?
I don’t know if you consider a single button a questionable decision, but the ADB II mouse was as close to perfect as the technology was able to support when it was released.
their classic mice weren't horrible, but from the puck on the original imacs (so like 98ish?) and everything after has been absolutely horrible on ergonomics.
It's super clear that they don't view the traditional mouse as the intended interface to their system and expect you to use the trackpad.
Hah this was my thought as well..
> Convenient USB-C charging via a port on the bottom
Well-played..
I just recently dabbled in STT as a way to control my computer. Unfortunately, i dont know if i will continue working on it, because it quickly revealed that our current GUI configuration and how we operate our systems, just dont "flow" well with Speech to Text and operations one might expect. I think id need some additional ML or something, in order to even partly go any further forward in that project.
Sure, I can add to the program I have currently to make it handle "any" task, but, with how we currently operate computers, and view content, there is not a way to avoid touching the keyboard and mouse entirely. Tbh im not even sure what i could propose to improve the gui for controlling the system star trek style.
Just admit it. You did it because of the Star Trek scene.
This is really cool, I love the simplicity of just flashing ZMK on it. Initially I thought it was an ESP32 Xiao, and got excited, but alas. Excellent project, either way!
Diane, Entering the town of Twin Peaks.
He should use hydrogen peroxide to de-yellow the plastic. The treatment makes those old plastics look like new, from what I've seen.
If they wanted to be non-destructive, then why not just interface with the DIN plug on the end of the existing cable?
Because that is way less clean of a solution and would be a total pain to carry around
This is a cool project. Enjoyed reading it.
This is cool and I love it. Wish I had more to say than that haha.
same
I have a bunch of these Apple Mouses for sale
I'm sorry, did you just unironically say "mouses"? -_-
Apple Mice. English is my second language
I made a three button Sun mouse into a pot pipe, with the bowl sticking out a hole in the middle "Adjust" button.
https://www.techjunkie.com/retro-friday-the-3-button-mouse/