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Logitech Makes 1 Billionth Mouse
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Dec 03, 2008 08:59 AM
from the so-much-carpal-tunnel dept.
from the so-much-carpal-tunnel dept.
Smivs writes "Logitech has hailed as a major landmark the production of their one billionth computer mouse.
The news comes at a time when analysts claim the days of the mouse are numbered.
'It's rare in human history that a billionth of anything has been shipped by one company,' said Logitech's general manager Rory Dooley.
'Look at any other industry and it has never happened. This is a significant milestone.'
The computer mouse will achieve a milestone of its own next week when it turns 40.
It was 9 December 1968 when Douglas C. Engelbart and his group of researchers at Stanford University put the first mouse through its paces."
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The Mouse Turns 40 169 comments
Smivs writes with an excerpt from the BBC marking the anniversary of what may be the most famous tech demo outside Trinity site: "The humble computer mouse celebrates its 40th anniversary today. On 9 December 1968 hi-tech visionary Douglas Engelbart first used one to demonstrate novel ways of working with computers.
The first mouse that Dr Engelbart used in the demo at the Fall Joint Computer Conference (FJCC) was made of wood and had one button.
Much of the technology shown off in the demo inspired the creation of the hardware and software now widely used. ...
The mouse, which was built by Bill English, helped Dr Engelbart demonstrate how text files could be clipped, copied and pasted as well as showing ways of using computer networks to collaborate on projects or co-edit documents." According to the article, "A day of celebration is planned in California to mark the 40th anniversary; with many of the researchers behind the original demo reunited to mark the event."
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Any othetr industry?? neve happened? (Score:5, Insightful)
McDonalds anyone?
Sheesh...
Re:Any othetr industry?? neve happened? (Score:4, Insightful)
What about pencil/ballpoint pen companies?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Coca-Cola? Pepsi? They've probably sold a billion+ of a variety of their individual product lines (i.e. over 1 billion bottles of Mountain Dew AND over 1 billion bottles of Pepsi Cola), as opposed to Logitech who sold a billion from a category of products that encompasses multiple products.
Same for Budweiser - I wouldn't be surprised if they've hit 10 billion units or more.
Re:Any othetr industry?? neve happened? (Score:5, Informative)
"A billion hours ago, human life appeared on earth. A billion minutes ago, Christianity emerged. A billion seconds ago, the Beatles changed music. A billion Coca-Colas ago was yesterday morning,"
-- Robert Goizueta, CEO (1980-1997) Coca-Cola Company
Parent
Re:Any othetr industry?? neve happened? (Score:4, Funny)
Well, I have only indirect evidence of this, but roughly 1 billion seconds ago my parents were getting busy.
Parent
Re:Any othetr industry?? neve happened? (Score:5, Interesting)
does anyone have a clue what was happening 1B seconds ago?
The Tenerife disaster [wikipedia.org] occurred on March 27 [wikipedia.org], 1977 [wikipedia.org], which is about 1 billion seconds, or 31 years [google.com] and 251 days [google.com], ago.
Parent
Re:Any othetr industry?? neve happened? (Score:5, Funny)
Not just the processing, but the design. It's not like someone mixes up a big bowl of ground beef, a few eggs, spices and whatever, then roughly forms round-ish patties before shipping them out.*
Everything produced for McDonald's is the result of a very stricly controlled manufacturing process to ensure that every meat-like patty, every tallow-spiked fry, every creepily long-lasting chocolate shake is the same to within very strict tolerances, whether you eat it in Miami or Whitehorse.
Make no mistake; that Quarter Pounder with Orange Dairy-Like Substance(TM) is as much the product of a technical manufacturing process as your Cordless Trackball with Media Whiz-Bang!(TM).
.
*That only happens at good burger joints.
Parent
Re:Any othetr industry?? neve happened? (Score:5, Funny)
Same nutritional value, mind you.
Parent
Re:Any othetr industry?? neve happened? (Score:5, Funny)
You assume that there isn't any mouse in the burger.
Parent
Re:Any othetr industry?? neve happened? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Any othetr industry?? neve happened? (Score:4, Funny)
cornflakes
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Re:Any othetr industry?? neve happened? (Score:4, Funny)
Congratulations! You're the billionth Slashdot post to misspell its.
Parent
Re:Any othetr industry?? neve happened? (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, you need a lot of mice to make a big mac.
Parent
Re:Any othetr industry?? neve happened? (Score:4, Funny)
Depends what you consider a lot. Obviously you need one to direct the action, and maybe two or three others to gather all the components and.. oh wait. Oh God, that's not what you meant at all, is it? You sick, sick man.
Parent
Re:Any othetr industry?? neve happened? (Score:4, Insightful)
there's an industry term called durable goods [wikipedia.org] which I expect is the category Logitec was speaking of. Consumables such as cigarettes, cheeseburgers, ballpoint pens etc, do not fall into this category.
An ARM processor is also a component, not a finished consumer product, so I would equally count them out of it.
Once you get those two issues out of the way, Logitec's claim becomes a lot more solid. I'm sure there's a few others out there like them, but not the hundreds or thousands that people are speculating.
Parent
Re:Any othetr industry?? neve happened? (Score:4, Funny)
find me a single company that has shipped 1 billion units of a non-consumable product. Maybe Hanes with their underwear?
Believe me, I eat a lot of spicy foods. My Hanes last about as long as a consumable.....
Parent
Re:Any othetr industry?? neve happened? (Score:4, Interesting)
McDonalds ships a buttload of stuff to their chains all around the world. Their supply logistics are pretty damned complex(I'm bidding on their transportation contract right now). Getting the same frenchfries sold in places where they can't grow potatoes isn't easy.
While the "sameness" of Mcdonalds food is repulsive to some, it's impressive that they manage to achieve such generic sameness in the markets they've established themselves in.
Parent
You'd need fewer mice if they were built to last (Score:3, Informative)
Re:You'd need fewer mice if they were built to las (Score:5, Funny)
That's weird. Why on earth would a Mac user not simply use the supplied Apple brand mouse? Oh, right.
Speaking to your criticism directly, I have about half a dozen Logitech mice, spanning a decade, that all work flawlessly. The only reason I have bought more since the first one 11 years ago has been to keep pace with technology (optical, wireless, 2d scroll wheel, laser, etc.)
Then again, it's not like I use mine for grueling tasks like ejecting CDs.
Parent
Re:You'd need fewer mice if they were built to las (Score:5, Informative)
I too am a big fan of Logitech mice. My main computer rig actually sports a Razer Diamondback these days, but my laptop mouse is Logitech, as are the mice on my workstation and server rack's KVM at work. Over the years I've had countless ones. Like you, I mostly have upgraded to keep pace with technology: moving to one with a scroll wheel, moving to an optical, moving to USB, getting a mouse with more buttons, etc.
Like all heavy use devices I've had a few failures (I've had 2 Logitech mice wear out on me), but overall compared with other mice I've still noticed them to be of a pretty high quality. When I used to work as a tech at a college many years ago, I can't count how many Microsoft Intellimouses had a scroll wheel that was jammed where it couldn't be moved anymore.
Parent
Re:You'd need fewer mice if they were built to las (Score:4, Informative)
You are incorrect. The click detection is indeed done by detecting the capacitance of your fingers. I accept that there may be more than one physical microswitch inside the device, but that has nothing to do with left/right-click determination. The only thing that matters is whether your finger is resting on the left half of the device or not.
Parent
Re:You'd need fewer mice if they were built to las (Score:5, Insightful)
Holy crap you're right! My parents have a Mighty Mouse on their iMac. I've been trying to right click with it for 2 weeks, with no luck, and its been driving me nuts. I just went upstairs and tried by lifting my index finger when I clicked, and voila: context menu! My reaction: "stupidest mouse ever."
This has to be the worst human interface design ever. This goes way beyond non-intuitive and is in face counter-intuitive. Why should I have to lift one finger to press with another? Point-and-click is now point-lift-and-click? Its going to take forever to explain this to my mom!
Seriously, who comes up with this crap? And how does it ever get past the testing stages? Does Apple deliberately retard their accessories in order to support a strong third party market?
I wish Apple would stop sacrificing function for obscure coolness. "Check it out, my Apple mouse can tell where my fingers are! Sure its a pain in the ass to use it, but IT CAN TELL WHERE MY FINGERS ARE!!!"
"Yeah? Well my Logitech mouse works right." Suck it, Steve.
Parent
Re:You'd need fewer mice if they were built to las (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:You'd need fewer mice if they were built to las (Score:4, Funny)
It's fun to become agitated AND I learned an OSX function I never new about ;-)
That's the Mac experince in a nutshell.
Parent
One billionth? Ha, that's nothing (Score:3, Interesting)
I think McDonald's would disagree with you.
Mice? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:One billionth? Ha, that's nothing (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
1 billion is not uncommon for some things (Score:4, Insightful)
Large manufacturers of small parts like screws can easily reach the billion mark in a decade.
The same goes for "categories" of parts like mice, computers, microprocessors, phones, etc.
I wonder how many CPUs Intel has shipped? I wonder how many phones the pre-1983-breakup version of AT&T shipped. I wonder how many screws and fasteners a large screw-making company ships in 10 years?
No, a billion may be a milestone but it's not huge, not when you put it in context.
Re:1 billion is not uncommon for some things (Score:5, Informative)
Don't know about Intel, but ARM shipped 1 billion processors last quarter, according to their Q3 results statement [arm.com].
Other things that must ship in the billions: screws, nails, paper clips, thumbtacks, staples, sweets (candy), baked beans, soda, LEDs (actually almost any discrete electronic component), copier paper, post-it notes, coins, pens, pencils, bin liners ... it's too easy.
Parent
Good Job Logitech! (Score:4, Informative)
Days numbered? (Score:5, Insightful)
The news comes at a time when analysts claim the days of the mouse are numbered.
[citation needed]
No seriously, where is there a mainstream commentator predicting the demise of the mouse, and backing it up with hard data and logic?
how can it be rare when there is an abundance? (Score:4, Funny)
Toothpicks? (Score:3, Interesting)
"It's rare in human history that a billionth of anything has been shipped by one company," said Logitech's general manager Rory Dooley. "Look at any other industry and it has never happened. This is a significant milestone."
Gum? Pencils? Paper? Soft drink? Bag of chips? Stick of RAM? Screwdriver? Television set? Surely some of these items have been sold more than a billion times by a single company...
razor blades (Score:4, Interesting)
i believe that the razor blade manufacturers hit their billionth mark within a decade of beginning production. yes, few companies ship billions- but logitech hit billion from multiple models. razor companies from the same model blade.
Bus mouse (Score:4, Funny)
Remember when the "bus mouse" was the cool upgrade over a crappy serial-port mouse, and you had that extra 8-bit ISA card with the funny port on it? IRQs ? I/O ports ? That was back before teenage girls took over the Internet.
And still no bluetooth trackballs! (Score:5, Interesting)
Come on, you can make, and sell, 1 billion mice; how hard can it be to make a minor variant of the Cordless Optical TrackMan that uses Bluetooth instead of an RF dongle???
I can't imagine the market is smaller than for some of the weird niche mice I've seen out there...
Dan Aris
Douglas Engelbart 1968 mouse demo video (Score:4, Interesting)
http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/1968Demo.html [slashdot.org]
Re:Douglas Engelbart 1968 mouse demo video (Score:5, Informative)
Clicky:
http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/1968Demo.html [stanford.edu]
Unless you really, really like using tags (or it isn't available...), "Plain Old Text" works pretty well.
Parent
You are our one billionth customer! (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder if when they ship this one billionth mouse to a customer, they will include in the box a flashing ad telling him that he is the one billionth customer and should click here to claim his prize.
Yes it is true. Very rare (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, a billionth of most things are microscopic in size. So shipping it is quite difficult. Great job logitec.
Death of the Mouse?! (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah... right... it won't be mainstream in 3-5 years... sorry, but I call BS.
Touchscreens and facial recognition software will not replace the mouse in an office environment. It won't replace it for gaming. Hell, it won't replace it period.
Take gaming as a simple example. When I'm playing WoW, I'm often looking elsewhere, eating a snack, drinking a beer, or talking to my wife who is sitting on the other side of the room... the last thing I'm going to want to do is stare at the screen and make funny faces at it to move the mouse. Sorry, ain't gonna happen.
Don't get me wrong here; touch screens are a huge boon and will have a place in specialized industries; auto interfaces, shared spaces, Cell Phones, etc.
But making the claim that it will no longer be mainstream and large companies, lets say HR Block, will drop the mouse and replace everything with a touch screen and facial recognition software is the biggest load of crap I've heard in quote a long time.
Not to be celebrated (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldn't call this an event worthy of celebration. These billion mice (along with the billions of other plastic mass-produced products out there) will one day end up in a landfill somewhere, and will take hundreds of years to break down. The major consequence of mass-production is mass-consumption, and the drawback of mass-consumption is mass-disposal.
I find it a bit sad that a device which, essentially, hasn't changed in 20 years isn't re-used more often. I have 10 year old keyboards and mice I still use.
I guess it's just part of our "throw away, buy a new one" culture that seems to ignore what happens to things once they're in the bin. Out of sight, out of mind.
Re:Not to be celebrated (Score:4, Informative)
While I do agree that mass-disposal is wasteful, the mouse has changed significantly in the last 20 years:
1. computer interface: RS-232, PS/2, USB
2. number of buttons
3. scroll wheel
4. mechanism: ball mouse with moving parts that wear out, optical mouse with special grid mousepad, modern optical mouse
5. wireless mice: IR, RF, Bluetooth
So its not like there hasn't been reasons to upgrade.
-molo
Parent
What are we going to do tonight, Brain? (Score:4, Funny)
Same thing we do very night, Pinky: try to take over the world! You see, I have commissioned a company by the name of Logitech to deliver ONE BILLION mice, an army large enough to overwhelm any defence system known to man.
[ding dong]
Ah, that will be my delivery. Soon, Pinky, the world will be ours for the taking.
Crikey, Brain, these mice are kind of odd. Why are their tails so long, and what is this hard shell [toc] all around them?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, I hope so! It'll go great with the CDs from my last 3 malfunctioning Logitech mice.
Re:What about Microsoft? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:What about Microsoft? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:What about Microsoft? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:What about Microsoft? (Score:5, Informative)
their first mouse was a rebranded logitech.
Parent
Re:What about Microsoft? (Score:4, Funny)
I'm curious to know how many mice Microsoft has shipped; theirs seem to be more plentiful than Logitech's in the wild.
That's because they pull their own cords and escape to the woods. They're a lot less house-trained than their Logitech counterparts.
Parent