MacNN reader Dave West writes about Apple Pro Mice failures at his production facility in Utah. The Apple Support forums suggest that Apple may have recently redesigned the cable on the Apple Pro mouse to to help track down problems, while another posting notes that updating USB Extension in Mac OS 9 reduced the occurence of the problem on his machine.

[David West] "We have noticed a large number of Apple Pro Mice failing lately. Typically, an operator will be using their machine when the mouse's l.e.d. will turn off, and the pointer will refuse to move. The keyboard is still active and powered. Removing the mouse and reinstalling will sometimes allow the user to continue working, but the mouse will fail again after about 5-10 minutes. Eventually, the mouse will completely die, and refuse to work at all. The problem does not seem to be isolated to any specific model of computer. We have seen this failure rate on about 6-7% of the apple mice in our operation."

[W. Raider] "Once again I had the mouse die on me. This is the second time tonight so here's some things I noticed about it.. 1) It just goes dark. No light whatsover and the cursor is frozen although the keyboard still works. 2) When I click the mouse the red LED blinks for a brief moment, then goes dark again. 3) Unplugging the mouse and plugging it into the the other (right) USB port on the keyboard will bring the mouse back to life somwhat. The cursor is still frozen and the red LED is, and remains at FULL brightness. It never dims. I took some video of it with my digital camera as a record. I also have video of the mouse going dark and the cursor frozen mid-drag of a folder. I'm now convinced it's a software problem or a hardware problem with the USB bus on the mac. Restarting, and again, not touching the mouse brings it back to normal operation.
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[Dave Sawyer] "Apple changed the cable on the Pro Mouse a few months back to one that's more flexible (the new cable is opaque pale grey). We've gotten a number of these to replace several of the first model of mouse that failed and haven't had any further failures, so I expect that the new mouse won't give you any further trouble, at least not from the cable breaking."

by MacNN Staff