I have to wonder if that design came about because Apple didn’t want people to leave the mouse plugged in all the time. It’s the kind of reasoned institutional blunder that I feel like I encounter in my work life fairly often out of momentum and groupthink.
I suspect the conversation was closer to “make it rechargeable, but don’t change anything else.”
You obviously can make an Apple style mouse that plugged in sensibly, but that would require changing the case and internal layout. The way they did it the new battery and charge port fit in the space left by the old AA’s.
