July 6, 2000: Goodbye Hockey Puck, Hello Pro Mouse

The original iMac brought a lot of nice things with it, increased market share, stylish looks and renewed profitability. With the good came some bad, in this case the hockey puck mouse. While some users loved the translucent puck, the vast majority found it too light, too round and too small.

Apple addressed the issue with the no button optical mouse. Instead of the oft-maligned single button mouse Apple cleverly designed a mouse where the entire top was a button, making it, as Steve Jobs quipped a "no button mouse." Describing the mechanism makes it sound awkward but the mouse worked great. It also eschewed the round form factor returning to the oblong shape that users preferred.

Apple introduced the first optical mouse that shipped standard with a computer (no moving parts to get gummed up) at Mac World New York this month in 2000.