The last mouse I loved was the Apple Pro Mouse that I got at Steve Jobs’ MacWorld NYC 2000 keynote. Black, encased in clear plastic, it glowed like the Terminator. The new Thermaltake Level 10 M Mouse is the Terminator.
It’s the antithesis of Apple’s design, and it works. I want this thing now.
Heck, I want this mouse and I don’t even like mice anymore (I use trackpads or Wacom tablets). That’s how bad I want it. I blame BMW Designworks USA. Its industrial designers and engineers did such an awesomely wacky job that looks weird and wonderful enough to awake my dormant nerdstincts.
The new mouse is not particularly beautiful, in the classic sense. It’s not simple and zen and understated like Jon Ive’s nimble metal and glass shards. The Apple Pro Mouse was the ultimate simple mouse, the epitome of simple, honest design. No buttons whatsoever, no nipples, nothing. It was just a slab of clear glass that, combined with the dark inner case, looked like solid mercury. When you turned it on, it was truly beautiful. And it did its job perfectly.
The Thermaltake Level 10 mouse is its polar opposite. It’s a metal beast. It’s complicated. It almost seems arbitrary and chaotic. There are surfaces taken away. There are holes — made to alleviate the sweat problems of heavy gamers — that make it look like a lethal weapon, a scientific device from the year 2200, a metal egg about to grow into a monster robot.
Or as Dieter Rams would not say: it’s f**king cool. And, on its own way, it’s honest too. So barebones and pukka. Genuine.
So yes. I don’t use mice anymore, but I crave this one. I just want to have it on my desk and I want to take it to bed and I want to play with it as if it were a Negative Zone spaceship model made by Reed Richards. And I will be able to do just that when it comes out this later this year. [BMW Designworks USA via Tom’s Hardware]