Behind the Scenes of Apple's Secret 'Input Design Lab'

Steven Levy went behind the scenes of Apple's secret 'Input Design Lab' for a feature on Medium. The team at Apple was getting ready for the launch of the new 4K and 5K iMacs, as well as, the new Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse 2, and Magic Trackpad 2.

One highlighted story was a problem with new Magic Mouse 2. It didn't sound right.

The culprit appeared to be the little polycarbonate runners on the bottom of the mouse. “We changed the foot architecture,” says Bergeron, Apple’s VP for Ecosystem Products and Technologies. (Translation: you pound on her keyboards.) “And it changed the friction characteristics of the sound.”


“When we did the previous mouse we spent so much time dialing those feet, the material, the geometry, everything, so that it sounds good and feels good when you move it on the table,” says Ternus, whose title is VP for Mac, iPad, Ecosystem and Audio Engineering. “But then you change the mass of the product and you change the resonant frequency of the product and all of a sudden the feet that we loved weren’t great anymore. They weren’t what we wanted.”

“It had just changed… kind of… the sound,” says Ternus, who has been working for Apple since 2001. “They all make a noise — the question is getting a noise we like. It sounded… not right.”
John Ternus

“Yeah,” agreed Bergeron, on the extended Mac team since 2002. “Not right. You just don’t like it.”

More anecdotes in the full article linked below...


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