Logitech: ‘Forever mouse’ was just a (bad) idea

Take a deep breath, everyone. Logitech’s “forever mouse” won’t be coming to market after all.

Logitech’s idea of a mouse that you’d buy once and pay for forever is just a “peek” into a possible future, Logitech said, in a statement sent to PCWorld and other publications. The company has no plans to bring it to market and will keep selling its existing mice, which you pay for, then own for the life of the mouse.

Newly-minted Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber suggested the idea of a forever mouse in an interview with The Verge, where she suggested that the concept of constantly paying for updates was somehow like buying a luxury item. The idea is that you’d constantly pay a fee to update the mouse with drivers and new features and hold onto it…forever?

The Internet erupted. As I pointed out, subscriptions are everywhere these days, including the first iterations of hardware as a service. That runs counter to the legacy of the PC and its components, where the idea was that you could build a desktop PC, say, with parts cobbled together from previous builds.

After publication, Logitech backed off. A company representative sent us this statement: “There are no plans for a subscription mouse,” the manufacturer said. “The ‘forever mouse’ is not an actual or planned product, but a peek into provocative internal thinking on future possibilities for more sustainable consumer electronics.”

Provocative indeed. But unwanted. Logitech makes some of the best mice that we recommend, but I can’t see PCWorld ever supporting a subscription-based mouse.