The iMac, refreshed

M4 update looks great, but one thing will drive users crazy.

The new M4 iMac looks like a beauty. The flat-screen iMac is one of Apple’s nicest machines. And Monday’s refresh looks like a very worthy update.

The M4 chip screams, the new colors look great, and the iMac finally ships with 16GB of unified memory as standard, not the previous model’s woefully inadequate 8GB.

But one huge design problem persists: The Magic Mouse’s charging port remains on the bottom.

I am perhaps the only person in the entire Apple universe who thinks the charging port’s location is a feature, not a bug.

The port’s location is a very deliberate design choice, made to force you not to use the mouse when it’s charging.

This is what drives people crazy about it, of course. But if the port were in a position where you could use the Magic Mouse as it charged, it would no longer be a wireless mouse — it’d be a wired mouse.

And that’s why Apple’s designers put the port on the bottom — so it would never, ever be used as a wired mouse, which would defeat the whole purpose of its wireless design.

It’s like Steve Jobs' initial reaction to the “Antennagate” scandal in 2010, when it was discovered that holding the iPhone 4 in your left hand could lead to dropped calls.

“You’re holding it wrong,” said Jobs.

Also in today’s newsletter:

— Leander Kahney, EIC.

A message from the Cult of Mac Deals team

A message from the Cult of Mac Deals team

Tweets of the day

Wallpaper of the day

One more thing ...

Customers can't anticipate what the technology can do. They won't ask for things that they think are impossible. But the technology may be ahead of them. If you happen to mention something, they'll say, “Of course, I'll take that. Do you mean I can have that, too?” It sounds logical to ask customers what they want and then give it to them. But they rarely wind up getting what they really want that way.

— Steve Jobs, 1989.

Today’s poll

Is the Magic Mouse really Apple's biggest design crime?

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Results from last Friday’s poll: Do you immediately install Apple’s betas on your main devices?

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