Apple mouse ball non-functional

Question

Is there a way to disassemble Apple Mouse to clean out the roller ball? Tried rolling it on cloth many times but no longer works.

Answer 1

I have a later USB Apple mouse, and the roller collects enough dust to become annoyingly non-functional in one direction or another within a period of 4-6 months. After the first time it happened, I realized that since the outer bezel was glued on, Apple did not intend for me to service the mouse, even though I knew exactly what was wrong. I took it in and the Apple Store gave me another one. The same thing happened again, but I am now nowhere near an Apple store, and the mouse is out of warranty anyway, so I fixed it myself. What a nightmare. Unlike the mouse shown in the video, the cables connecting one circuit board to the other are much shorter, and unplugging and re-plugging them is like trying to add mustard to a fully assembled ham sandwich without removing the bread.
In the good old days of user-serviceable mousies, all you had to do to clean the tracking ball and its contacts was turn a bezel 1/4 turn with your fingers and out popped the ball. Now of course since the Apple mouse uses a laser instead of a ball to track movement, that's no longer necessary. But the scrolling ball could easily be designed for simple removal. Having to break open a glued-together component and go through the virtual equivalent of micro surgery just to clean a ball and rollers (in a ridiculously complex assembly) that are just going to get dirty and start malfunctioning within months is absolutely ridiculous. The scroll wheel, being on top, will collect dust internally no matter how operating-room clean you keep your office.
This mouse is obviously designed to be non-user serviceable. And frankly, what computer service technician would go through all that hassle without charging you $50 (the cost of the mouse) anyway? So essentially the mouse has a tricky bit of built-in obsolescence that would force all but the most determined do-it-yourselfer to just go out and buy another one. I thank you for the video anyway, but this operation is not for the faint of heart, so I'm quite sure that very few people will actually try to clean their scroll wheel assembly, which is a shame and a waste.