Oh, I know. The hockey puck wasn't a great design. And Macally mice sold really well back then, as did ADB > USB adapters and snap-on mouse covers, I've still got a new in box one of those somewhere.Funnily enough, this was the excuse that I and many of my colleagues used when explaining the puck mouse to customers back when that was the thing that came with all desktop Macs. "It has a bump on the middle of the button to keep your hand oriented. It is meant to be gripped by your fingertips instead of resting your palm. Orient the mouse then curl your fingers over to keep it in the correct position and it works great." And actually, it did work quite well.
The thing is, though, that "correct positioning" lessons don't matter. As soon as you have to give a tutorial on how to use a mouse correctly, you've already lost the "it just works" battle. Because that thing that is supposed to be second-nature and work right out-of-the-box doesn't actually work intuitively.
We sold a lot - and I mean A LOT - of Macally mice in the late 90's and early 00's.
No Apple mouse before or after had that level of replacement.
The first hockey puck didn't even have the bump, that was a later concession to how much of a problem a round mouse was. But as far as tutorials on how to use a mouse correctly, almost everybody had to have those in the early '80s when mice were a new thing, lots of people didn't automatically know how to use it. And there were lots of people complaining about it, they didn't like having to move a hand away from the keyboard, claimed it slowed them down.
And the best fix for the round mouse was just pulling the colored panels off. It took just enough of the round shape away that it was easy to position it. Wasn't as pretty, was a lot easier to grab without looking at it.