I turned a 40 year old Apple Mouse into a speech to text button
23 comments
·May 3, 2025Tsarp
sipjca
I’m the author of the post and will also be releasing an open source speech to text app in the coming weeks. It’s what I’ve been using for months, but packaging it for people
It’s going to be extremely simple, and hopefully easy enough to use. MIT licensed, free
rietta
I love it! "Computer...Ah, hello computer!" immediately comes to mind.
dhosek
Maybe it’s because I’m just recovering from attending my 35-year college reunion, but I had a memory return of being in the college computer lab and telling someone to use the mouse to move the cursor, so they picked it up and waved it in the air.
That Star Trek IV scene was a reminder that a computer mouse isn’t as universally intuitive of a device as it might seem.
(And on a tangentially-related note—I’ve been driving a Ford Mustang convertible this weekend and the fact that some screens are touch screens and some are not has been a bit of a source for confusion to me. I think I don’t have the same issue with my Prius because there the steering-wheel cursor keys control a screen that’s on a different plane from the main dashboard. Also, I really miss my radar cruise control.)
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amelius
Another Apple mouse with the charging connector on the bottom side ...
jsheard
The Magic Mouse's charging port always gets memed on but to be honest that's the least offensive thing about it, since the battery goes for months between charges. The real problem is that it has some of the worst ergonomics of any input device on the market today for absolutely no reason besides aesthetics. If they moved the charging port it would still be a terrible mouse.
Andrew6rant
Agreed. I would call Apple's Magic Mouse the worst mouse of all time if it didn't have the cool feature of working as both a trackpad and a mouse. Haven't really seen that elsewhere
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bogantech
It's better than the puck mouse and Mighty Mouse at least
dhosek
It’s a kind of nice feature, but I’ve been a solid magic trackpad user instead since they first introduced the whole magic keyboard/trackpad/mouse set of accessories.
wellthisisgreat
I think Microsoft had some kind of a curved mouse that did that?
skydhash
It’s fine if you only use it for a few minutes a day (executive desk). If you care about ergonomic, you have to get used to weirdness.
runlevel1
The author said their aim was to "be nondestructive to this Apple mouse", and would it truly be an Apple mouse if it didn't have at least one questionable design decision?
But, in all seriousness, I'm impressed that they were able to do this non-destructively.
addaon
> would it truly be an Apple mouse if it didn't have at least one questionable design decision?
I don’t know if you consider a single button a questionable decision, but the ADB II mouse was as close to perfect as the technology was able to support when it was released.
cratermoon
Scotty in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home picking up a Macintosh mouse and saying "computer"
lotyrin
Yes. It's incredible to me that this project seems to have been completed without knowledge or any intent to replicate this scene, that it seems to be entirely coincidental.
ynniv
Who sees an original mouse and thinks "speech recognition" without this classic context?
qgin
Same. I did like 5 text searches in the article to see if I had missed it somehow
teuobk
My first thought as well!
Here's the scene for those who are unaware: https://youtu.be/90eg_erObDo?si=E0ZbU_k-H7ANLqcZ&t=179
mansoorsheriff
This is a cool project. Enjoyed reading it.
For folks looking to running speech to text locally(in the context of dictation) and dont want to do a subscription there are a few apps that run whisper large turbo locally (optimized to run really fast on apple silicon).
1. https://goodsnooze.gumroad.com/l/macwhisper (dictation + transcription)
2. https://carelesswhisper.app (does dictation only, and does it really well; cheapest)
3. https://superwhisper.com (both local and hosted models + lots of bells and whistles, but much higher pricing)