Anecdotal data: I’ve had a long series of Logitech mice that never lasted longer than 2 or 3 years and had so many maddening range issues, so I switched to Microsoft wireless keyboard+mice sets and thus far am having better luck.
I also tried a Magic Mouse, but the lack of a real right-click button, where you couldn’t click right and left at the same time, earned it a next-day return to the store. It was substituted with a Microsoft Arc Bluetooth for travel gaming.
I’ve had issues with my current Logitech mouse. And it hasn’t lasted the way I expect given its price. I didn’t have the same issues with my past logitechs. Though the previous one had this weird thing where it wasn’t supported by windows 7. Despite Win 7 coming out just a couple years after the mouse was introduced. And Logitech still selling it afterwards, but never adding proper software support to make it work…
They seem to have gone through a weird patch. Where new products were just slight tweaks of old ones with less durable parts. Completely new products were out and out junk. The good stuff were older models still on sale with shit support. And the new stuff just didn’t last.
They seem to have been working hard to remedy that. So it might very well be down to when and what you bought. And the cheapest has always been, well cheap.
Apple has drivers for the Magic Trackpad for Windows as part of boot camp with all the same functionality. You should be able to use them on a regular PC.
I used to always use Logitech, but the last time I needed a new mouse for my PC I found a 2-pack of Zelotes gaming mice for less than $20. They’re not programmable, but in practice that doesn’t matter - 3 buttons, a scroll wheel, plus back and forward side buttons and a spare double-click button are plenty.
Now I’m happy I got that 2-pack. I finally got fed up with the ‘magic’ mouse on my work mac — always magically registering right-clicks as left-clicks, magically scrolling in the wrong direction, magically eating through batteries like there’s no tomorrow and, most recently, magically disconnecting from the Bluetooth many times a day, often disrupting screenshare demos at work. So now I’m using the spare wired gaming mouse for it. No batteries, no Bluetooth disconnects, no bogus clicks or broken scrolling. It’s like magic.
Mac products just can’t compete with the quality of bargain-bin Chinese imports…
My anecdotal data is the same as your anecdoal data, but it’s not limited to just mice.
On the mice, the buttons just stop working after 18 months or so. I switched to a Microsoft wireless mobile mouse, and it’s still going strong after 3 or 4 years.
My kids each had a Logitech cordless headset. They worked great, until the swivel where the cups attached to the clip started cracking. Both sets, and they cracked in the same way. Googling told me it was a common failure. Someone had a Shapeways store set up selling the little plastic piece, because you couldn’t get one from Logitech. Eventually those cracked too - it’s just a bad design. Replaced them with Sennheiser corded headset, and it’s still like new years later.
And most painful of all, I had a Harmony remote. I loved that thing. Eventually the charger circuit broke. This was in the remote itself, not the base. Fortunately, it used the same battery that my camera used, so I’d charge the thing with the camera charger when needed. And then one day it just stopped working.
I’m not sure what’s going on at Logitech, but their quality has really gone downhill over the last 10 years or so.
This is my setup too: Expert Mouse on the right side of my (split) keyboard, Magic Trackpad on the left.
Apparently, Kensington blew their engineering budget on the trackball and had to cobble together a scroll wheel with bits of plastic they found lying around the factory, because it has the crunchiest, skippiest, least-refined scroll wheel I’ve ever used. So I use the trackpad for scrolling and gestures and variety. Since I’m left-handed but like many lefties have conformed to pointing-device-on-the-right, that works out well for me.
I haven’t had any trouble with the Magic Trackpad. It’s kind of amazing that it’s Bluetooth because I’ve never noticed any lag or had any disconnection issues.
Incidentally, I also have a Wacom tablet and maybe the newer ones are better, but in terms of using it as an input device it’s nowhere close to as smooth as a Magic Trackpad. I suspect that Apple hasn’t exposed the APIs for smooth scrolling, inertia, rubber-banding, etc to third parties.
I’ve had a Logitech MX Master for several years. I replaced the rechargeable battery a couple of years back and it’s still going strong. The charging cord plugs into the front of the mouse so you can keep working while it charges. I disabled most of the spiffy features and quite happily work with it every day.
The main reason I bought it was that other mice were too small and my hand ended up hurting from trying to conform to the smaller egg shape. The MX Master is that bit larger that my hand doesn’t hurt.
JH Christ on toast! On what planet is a $40 mouse “cheap-ass”?!?
I have no fraking clue what that is, but I LIKE IT!
You’d be better off using a spooger, as the thickness of the knife might destroy the panel in the process. When you do it, start from the back of the trackpad, near the battery compartment.
That’s pretty garish. I’m running this:
(changing the LED color changes the resolution. Ooh… Fancy…
basically, I needed a mouse-- and quickly, because the buttons on my old mouse were registering double clicks.
The apple mouse that came with my imac eats batteries and is less precise. (and I really don’t care about gestures.)
I’ve been a non-Mac person for the rest of my life, but am using a MBP since April now. Argument was they are “far easier to admin”, and I thought I’ll give it a try.
Besides the said designer stupidity - and hey, what a massive fail this is - the mouse isn’t as neat as some people claimed years ago. This idea to be able to do gestures on the surface? Great, but sensitivity is a hot mess between software, so I need to tweak it constantly. Also, why the fuck doesn’t it have some asymmetrical proportions? I’m not only getting cramps in my hand, I often inadvertently have it pointing in the wrong direction after changing desks or getting up for a sec. It’s always a WTF moment not to find the arrow after moving the mouse.
Of course it also stopped working when on a deadline and I had to recharge it. And I’m on a current MBP model. Which means I had to borrow a charging cable and a charger from an iPhone user nearby, because, hey, USB-C.
My experience on a Mac, so far, and in general: “where are all the ugly but practical things on this?”, software and hardware-wise. I miss programmable buttons, hardware switches for WiFi/BT, programs like pdf24, notepad++, irfanView, and much more.
And the Mac crashed. Hard. More than three times in the last weeks.
So gimme that mouse, Seamus, and get me my Thoughbook from the drawer. It weighs a ton, but it has a handle, even. 
I use a wired Logitech LS1 laser mouse on my Mac Pro. Not too large so it fits perfectly in the hand, perfectly reliable, great tracking. Sadly it’s discontinued and the wired replacements are all gaming mice with overwrought controls and equally overwrought prices. That might be why new-old-stick LS1s sell for $90, over 4x the price when they were still current.
Right?? That bugged the heck out of me as soon as I started using it. It’s just a piece of plastic with a rubber ring – no ball bearings, no lubrication, nothing, and it’s borderline useless out of the box. Not what I expected from a $90 “pro” trackball. I found that it loosened up over time, and I squirted a little graphite in there at one point to give it a bit of lubrication. I use it all the time now, but that scroll wheel is cheap.
I still use these as my preferred input device:
(Microsoft Trackball Explorer).
I switched to these after using a mouse for many years, and haven’t found anything that I like better since that time.
I have one. They are great.
I have no idea why they felt the Apple Magic Mouse needed a redesign. I have one of the first generation at work, and the latest generation on my iMac at home.
Great! The latest one is rechargeable, so I don’t have to keep replacing batteries.
Wait! I have to flip it like a turtle to charge it and can’t use it while it charges…
… also, since the battery compartment is gone, if a hair gets stuck in the laser hole, I have to either blow it deeper into the mouse, or fish it out with a pair of tweezers or a toothpick, where on the old one I could remove the battery cover and easily clear it in seconds…
… and eventually the rechargeable battery is no longer going to hold a charge. Sweeeeet.
Thanks Apple! Why do I stick with you? Oh right. My job.
the M line is their productivity/non gaming line. Features some wired products as well as products that while wireless are usable as a wired mouse through the charging cable. Including some low cost ones with pretty identical features to the ls1.
I think the pricing your seeing now is down to scammers. I’ve searched a couple of discontinued logitech lately. Almost all of them are listed as $200 from Chinese sellers. No matter how long ago they were discontinued.
Explains it fairly well. Most of your better mice have that sort of functionality. But most of your $10 never change the battery ones are pretty basic.
If your Mac is crashing 3 times in a week, there’s something very wrong. I would first try a backup of your data and clean install of the OS (I think you can do the re-install from a recovery partition on modern Macs), and do not re-install any software with system extensions (“drivers”). If it’s still crashing, take it in for repair.
