Apple’s wireless accessories for its iMac line got a much-needed update today alongside the new desktops themselves. Sure—the new 21.5-inch iMac will be 4K and beautiful, but more importantly none of the peripherals will require AA batteries anymore.
That’s right! When Apple redesigned the Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad, the company decided the people who use them should finally be free from battery hell and made them all rechargeable. Now users will just have to plug in via Lightning cable whenever the battery starts to get low, which the company claims will only happen about once a month.
Charging the accessories shouldn’t take long either. Just two minutes of charge time should recover nine hours-worth of energy in case you need to go wireless again quickly.
Magic Keyboard
The beloved keyboard also got a few design tweaks, the most noticeable of which is the size of the keys themselves: they’re larger now. Apple made this change without making the keyboard larger and without altering the placement of the keys, by simply taking out some of the space around the keys.
The keyboard is also made out of a single slab of metal now, thick in the back and thinner in the front to maintain the angled slant. The keys also, reportedly, still have that wonderfully satisfying click-clack sound when pressed. The cost is $99, up $30 from the original keyboard.
Magic Trackpad
The trackpad hasn’t been a huge crowd pleaser in the past, but with the help of Force Touch—and finally clicking like any normal touchpad would—it could actually be worth your money. The wider, square-shaped trackpad also lives on a sloped metal slab, but the addition of Force Touch means it costs a lot more than the older version: $129, or a $60 hike.
Magic Mouse
Apple’s mouse didn’t see a whole lot of updates, but it’s worth noting that the obnoxious plate on the bottom of the device is gone (because no batteries, remember?!) and that’s a welcome change. The mouse is also a bit longer now, but still has the same general shape of the older one, so it’s not exactly ergonomic. The cost only inched up about $10 from the original Magic Mouse, to $79.
All of these accessories are available today (the older ones have actually been removed from Apple’s store online) and will come standard with the new iMacs, which you can check out here.