Like a fair few Mac users before me, I have had more than one or two issues with my Mighty Mouse. I have tried the ‘clean the ball by rolling on a cloth upside down’ method on a number of occasions but the results never seem to last for long. Sooner rather than later, I end up losing the ability to scroll up or down or both.
After swapping out my Mighty Mouse for an RS-inducing mini travel mouse yesterday and in the full certainty of voiding my warranty, this evening I got the tools out and dissected my mouse. Following the advice and pictures on a number of websites, including mightymouserepair.com, a post on theory.isthereason and another on shirster’s blog, I prodded, poked, levered and flexed my way into the mouse. Once inside and having disconneted the ribbon cables, I disassembled the workings, cleaned the ball assembly and casing with isopropyl alcohol and then reversed my actions to rebuild my squeaky clean mouse. After a quick check to ensure all was well and the ribbons were reseated properly, I reattached the outer ring with a few dabs of a weaker glue than Apple’s Chinese assembly folk use (my guess is that I’ll need to do this again) and taped it to set overnight.
There’s a few scratches on the case from slips of my craft knife and the warranty is toast but, given that I was looking at NZ$111 plus carriage to replace it, I’d say that I had nothing to lose and came away with a result. So, if your Mighty Mouse isn’t working and you have more time than money, dig out your tools and dissect that mouse.