Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The History of Microsoft Mice”.
Back in 1983, when the original Microsoft, green-eyed Mouse first hit the market, mice weren’t terribly common peripherals. But Microsoft saw an opportunity to be early to the game for the upcoming surge of graphical operating systems, as well as to make some of its own software products easier to use. So Microsoft bundled their first Mouse with copies of word and notepad and sold it for 195 US Dollars equivalent to about 600 today, even though that was incredibly expensive, you also needed a separately sold Microsoft, adapter card for your PC and there definitely weren’t any of the Bells and whistles you see on Modern mice. In fact, the mouse ball was just plain steel. It didn’t even have that rubber coating you’d, see in later mice, Microsoft only sold about 5 000 of the green eyed mice and their Mouse business didn’t really take off until a later version of the smells came out in 1985., nicknamed the gray eyed Mouse.
It did feature a quieter rubber coated ball, a higher tracking resolution and more or ergonomically designed buttons that were easier to click for a wide variety of hand, shapes winning the mouse significant to claim and as a result, setting the stage for Microsoft to become a major Mouse manufacturer say that five times fast for the next wow, it’s been nearly four decades. So, let’s look at how they’ve evolved that whole thing was intro. Microsoft released a much more modern, looking Mouse design in 1987 named the dove Mouse. You know like the soap. Importantly, it was available in PS2 Port compatible versions, handy as the PS2 port on computers was also introduced that same year and went on to become the dominant type of mouse part before USB, but Microsoft’s next major Mouse release was even more radical. We’Ll show you right. After we thank Telo for sponsoring this video paying over 30 for your phone bill in this economy, telemobile aims to be a super reliable mobile provider with prices that won’t break the bank with data plans starting at just nine dollars a month. You get a host of features like free international calls to 60 plus countries free high hot spot and tethering, and unlimited 2G data after you’ve used your 4G LTE slash 5G balance.
Oh and forget those binding contracts, tele plans renew every 30 days, giving you the freedom to cancel them at any time without additional charges check out cello at the link below and start saving. Today, in 1991 we got the ballpoint Mouse and instead of being a mouse in the traditional sense, it was more of a trackball that clipped to the side of a laptop and connected to the system using a Serial Port. Most laptops of the era didn’t have any kind of pointing device built in at all and were big enough to quickly eat up most of the airline trade table, which is why products of the era were designed this way, but getting away from trackballs 1993. What a year brought up the next version of the traditional Microsoft mouse aptly named the Microsoft mouse 2.0.
It was commonly known as the kidney Mouse as it had an asymmetrical curve shape, which made it comfortable for right handers, but for the roughly 10 of the population that was left-handed, it was a little awkward, even though Microsoft had the audacity to claim in its marketing That it could be used with either hand equally well, they even doubled down on the kidney design for their popular 1996 model called the intelli mouse in Italian mouse. I like what it does with my tongue. The biggest new feature it brought was the scroll wheel, love those things and, although, strictly speaking, it wasn’t the world’s first scroll wheel Mouse, the intellimous was credited with helping to popularize it, as scrolling through web pages, was just starting to become a common enough Pastime. I’M still strolling, but there’s actually a misconception exception that the original intellimous was the first consumer mouse with an optical sensor.
Actually, the intellimos still used a ball, as did the telemos pro, which was released in 1998 with a higher Arch that was intended to be more comfortable. The version that was actually the first Optical Mouse to become widespread in the consumer Market was the intellimos Explorer released in 1999 and it looked every bit the most of the future, at least by late 90s standards. The mouse was contained in a silver colored chassis and it even had a brilliant red light at the back that lit up whenever the user moved it. Although it was quite expensive with a starting retail price of 74.95, the optical sensor was a hit with consumers who enjoyed its resistance to dirt and dust and all those little bits that would just get caught.
If you took the ball out – and you like – you, you’re, not old, like me later in the year, Microsoft added the optical sensor branded as the intellii to the standard intellimos at a lower price point and the next year we got the intellimos optical, which was actually Ambidextrous, I actually don’t know who uses the mouse in their left hand just get used to it. A wireless version of the intellimos Explorer appeared in 2001, but in 2003 it was updated with a scroll wheel that could actually tilt side to side for horizontal scrolling. Super useful in spreadsheets and in 2006 the wired explorer was updated with a 9000 image per second sensor. A dramatic increase from the original model’s 1500 as Microsoft wanted to Target Gamers, who would benefit from The increased tracking rate, but the next Microsoft mice were dramatically different.
In 2008, we got the arc Mouse which emphasized portability, as you could fold it up and its design, which arced up off your desk surface, made it extremely memorable. In 2010, The Arc mouse was updated to bring us the arc touch mouse which not only featured touch scrolling rather than traditional wheel, but it could also fold flat to make it easier to slip into a bag, though we did get a regular touch mouse in 2011. For those who didn’t like the arc shape next, we get the very antithesis of sleek, the sculpt ergonomic Mouse, followed by various iterations of more standard Mouse designs during the 2010s. Then in 2017, Microsoft came somewhat full circle when they released the classic intellimos, based on the original Explorer design, with a modernized look followed by the pro and telemos in 2019, with the more accurate sensor – and you guessed it baby RGB, because not even Microsoft was going To pass up the opportunity to take a classic and make it gamer and we’d be remiss if we didn’t also mention the Microsoft adaptive Mouse released in 2022, designed for a high degree of customizability and accessibility.
The base Mouse is a compact square that you can attach mouse tails to either an official Microsoft one or a 3D printed option that accommodates different grip types that suit you, but this might be the last notable entry in the Microsoft mouse lineup. The company is putting everything under the surface brand going forward which for now means game over for the Microsoft mouse brand. So thanks for watching guys, if you like this video hit like hit, subscribe and hit us up in the comment section with your ideas for topics that we should cover in the future.
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