A Cluster of Grapes – and some Manufacturing Discoveries

[B S Magnet]

Just noticed something else that deserved a mention.

On some of my puck mice, the back panel uses the 'blue' holographic, like the one on the original Bondi Blue iMac and tray-loading iMacs (behind the port door). But on other puck mice, the holographic is the 'graphite' one, whether the mouse itself is fruit-coloured or graphite.

I can't be sure, but I'm guessing that the puck mice adopted the graphite holographic back when the iMacs became slot-load. The graphite holo is the same as the one used on original Sawtooth G4 Power Macs (which was later removed with the Gigabit Ethernet models in 2000).

I've been confused by this aspect for a while, because it's obviously really easy to interchange the back panels of puck mice, so it's possible that some I own have already been swapped around in the past. Who knows.

View attachment 1945232

And, there are also some mice where the panel is upside-down:

View attachment 1945233

A probably good way to determine why one has graphite and the others have bondi is to provide the serials (or a pic of them) beneath the covers. I have a hunch that either the manufacturing code, date code, or both, on the graphite cover variant will depart from the ones which use the bondi variant — much like the keyboard counterparts posted earlier in this thread (the bondi label shows NK850, or end of 1998, and the other shows NK938, which is later 1999, after the fruit iMacs and Power Mac G4 were announced.

 

[mectojic]

For the sake of confirmation, here are two blueberry USB keyboards I found. The first has the blue holographic, and the second uses graphite. Based on the serial numbers, the blue one was manufactured in week 24, 1999 (though interestingly, the Apple © is 1998), while the grey is week 48, 1999.

Along with the puck mice, it then seems likely that the holographics of keyboards and mice switched from blue to graphite with the launch of the slot-load iMacs.

Thanks @B S Magnet for the serial number decoding help!

 

[Macbookprodude]

I want to apologize for my posts earlier several months back, I guess when I originally got my 350mhz sawtooth the puck mouse came with it and I very much remember that after several hours of using it, my hand really started to hurt as these were not the best ergonomic mice Apple made, in fact I don’t think any of them were ever really ergonomic. But, thinking back on the graphite puck mouse I had, I might try to get another one and maybe this time my hand will adjust to it better than back in 2000.

Again, I did not mean for the negative comments just my memory of using it was not good for my hand health.

 

[mectojic]

I want to apologize for my posts earlier several months back, I guess when I originally got my 350mhz sawtooth the puck mouse came with it and I very much remember that after several hours of using it, my hand really started to hurt as these were not the best ergonomic mice Apple made, in fact I don’t think any of them were ever really ergonomic. But, thinking back on the graphite puck mouse I had, I might try to get another one and maybe this time my hand will adjust to it better than back in 2000.

Again, I did not mean for the negative comments just my memory of using it was not good for my hand health.

No worries.
It is a weird mouse, and part of the challenge is holding it in a very different way to all other mice that exist. Took me a day or two to get used to it!

 

[weckart]

I remember going to a Macworld Expo in the early noughties and among the spam and small freebies that were thrust in my hand back then was a Macally puck mouse snap-on called the iPocket. It transformed it from a puck shape into something approaching a standard mouse of the period - ostensibly to relieve the ache of using one in its factory form.



Never had a use for mine as I didn't have a puck mouse so sadly I think I threw it out.

 

[Amethyst1]

[...] a Macally puck mouse snap-on called the iPocket. It transformed it from a puck shape into something approaching a standard mouse of the period [...]

Now I have seen everything

 

[Macbookprodude]

I think I remember seeing those at a CompUSA.