Jobs Unaware of Mighty Mouse.


Highly placed sources at Apple indicate CEO Steve Jobs is completely unaware of the MIghty Mouse – a multi-button mouse with a scroll ball that by all accounts goes against every fiber of his being.

Jobs has long held that the simplicity of a one-button mouse far outweighed the added functionality of a multi-button mouse. Others within Apple, however, believe that the lack of a multi-button mouse has been holding the Mac back.

According to sources, the Mighty Mouse was developed in a skunk works project set up in a small shack at the back of the Apple campus near the dumpsters full of unsold iPod socks. To evade Jobs’ all-seeing eye, prototypes were developed by carving them from bars of soap employees smuggled into the shack “internally.”

All aspects of the product’s subsequent development and marketing were hurriedly conducted during meetings when Jobs excused himself to take a phone calls from his many celebrity friends. This required the cracker-jack coordination of thousands of Apple employees bent on bringing Apple’s mouse technology into the late 20th century against their mercurial leader’s will.

“We’ve tried everything with Steve,” said a senior executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity, “And nothing’s worked.

“I’d say to him, Steve, the one-button mouse is a needless anachronism that gives our critics an easy target. And he’d say to me, Jon Rubinstein, I’m more concerned with making easy-to-use computers than I am with listening to the blatherings of John Dvorak and Paul Thurrott. Now finish your Go-GURT.”

Apple staff have continued to keep the existence of the Mighty Mouse from Jobs by blocking his computer from viewing any information on the Apple site about the pointing device, training all Apple Store employees to remove the Mighty Mouse from the shelves when he enters, and by standing behind Jobs and waving their arms frantically when reporters start to ask questions about it.

Despite these efforts, employees know that Jobs will eventually find out about the mouse. Sources on the project believe their best defense against Jobs may be a strong offense, and plan an intervention-style confrontation where they will take the stance that he has a “mouse problem.”

“If things go particularly bad,” one source said “we may be forced to throw a hockey-puck mouse in his face.

“I’m hoping it doesn’t get to that point, though.”