I did a video on why Apple designed their mouse to charge from the bottom. Let me explain. I know it looks odd but there is an absolutely valid reason. Several actually. 1) the mouse charges rapidly. A single full charge will often last over a month. 5 minutes of charging is good for hours too in a pinch. 2) Lightning cables don’t have the stain relief to be used on a mouse that is flying around on your desk all day. Tips would break off and wear out. They would also have to greatly reinforce the lightning port. This would also be true if they used USB-C or micro-USB. People would wear cables down and they would break. Not a great user experience. Other mice like the Logitech G Pro mice have had to invent wild nonstandard USB cables just to reduce strain on the cable while in use in a wired mode (as pictured) Apple entirely avoided the problem. 3) the mouse is designed to be a wireless mouse and only wireless. It doesn’t support HID over USB protocol as if it were a wired. If the cable came out the front people might assume you can use it while plugged in with wireless disabled on your computer but you can’t. Sure they could add HID over USB but that would encourage you to use it as a wired mouse which is what they are entirely trying to avoid. 4) Apple is doing everything to try to make sure you don’t try and just leave the cable plugged in all the time. It’s better for the battery to discharge and recharge rather than stay fully charged because you leave the cable in 24/7. 5) wires get in the way and clutter up the aesthetics of using the mouse. They don’t want a cable dragging the mouse down to screw the up the free experience of using an untethered wireless device. They also want their computers to look clean and if some has brand new iMac with a wired Magic Keyboard and Mouse then that won’t look as sexy. Now the mouse is an ergo nightmare and that is valid criticism and why I hate this mouse. But charging from the bottom was thoughtful and well reasoned. Sure they could have designed a great wired mouse or even a combo mouse but they wanted to make a truly wireless mouse and that’s what they did. Remember the earlier version that looked identical took AAA batteries. This one now is just rechargeable but still the same mouse. Just because now it can use a cable to charge doesn’t mean it’s trying to be a wired mouse now. – at Alameda, CA