Simplicity? Is it simpler to press the control key on the keyboard with your left hand and press the mouse button with your right? I prefer to just right-click.
The one-button mouse is the perfect example of Apple arrogance and stubborness. A/W Maya necessitates the use of a 3-button mouse. Games need at least 2 buttons. Apple wants users from the 3-D and game worlds to use their hardware.
It doesn't make sense. Give us the standard option of using 2-buttons! Those who prefer to can still ignore the 2nd button.
<strong>Simplicity? Is it simpler to press the control key on the keyboard with your left hand and press the mouse button with your right? I prefer to just right-click.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I prefer to click-and-hold, when I use contextual menus at all. They're slower than menubar menus, because you have to mouse more precisely. Multi-button mice, in addition to being more confusing for new users and cumbersome for kids, also aggravate wrist problems. It's much more ergonomic to click with several naturally-positioned fingers at once, or by rocking your whole hand forward if you're a child, than it is to single out one digit repeatedly.
[quote]<strong>The one-button mouse is the perfect example of Apple arrogance and stubborness. A/W Maya necessitates the use of a 3-button mouse. Games need at least 2 buttons.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Most UNIX apps require 3 button mice, because that's what every UNIX workstation since the original XTerms have shipped with. Most games are written for Windows, which has always used 2 button mice. Developers will code for their target interface. That alone is enough reason for Apple should stick to a one-button default.
It's important to realize that Apple's mouse isn't one button because it's primitive - the mice Steve saw when he toured Palo Alto had 3 buttons. The Apple HI team pared the Apple mouse down to one button as a result of their exhaustive usability research. Modern operating systems are not so much more elaborate that they require multiple buttons; instead, what happens is that a lot of developers and designers (of e.g. the Windows interface) have realized that if you push system complexity out to the user, you save yourself a great deal of trouble designing the interface. The end user ends up paying the cost in terms of a steeper learning curve and decreased usability, but who's counting?
Anyone who is serious about gaming or Maya or some other specialty can choose from myriad 2, 3, 5, or n button mice and trackballs and who knows what else, some of them tailored to specific applications. I can't figure out why Apple should go into this market, considering that it puts them in competition with their third party hardware developers and buys them nothing.
[quote]<strong>Apple wants users from the 3-D and game worlds to use their hardware.</strong><hr></blockquote>
People in the gaming world are already used to buying specialty mice like the Boomslang; people in the UNIX market are used to spending so much on hardware that they won't even notice the extra cost of a 3 (or 4, or 10) button mouse compared to the savings realized by buying a Mac. Apple has already accomodated these needs in the best way they could have, by making sure that more elaborate mice and mouse substitutes just work, right out of the box.
You are correct--MS copied most of their GUI from Apple. I don't see what that has to do with Apple ripping off MS. The two are not mutually exclusive.
As for your comment about "industry standard" technologies...who do you think is establishing these standards? Intel invented USB. Apple used a proprietary slot technology called "nubus" while wintel compatible hardware used PCI slots. Apple adopted PCI and USB so Apple hardware would be compatible with cards and peripherals that were being manufactured for the dominant platform (wintel). They also adopted AGP from the Wintel platform.
<strong>Simplicity? Is it simpler to press the control key on the keyboard with your left hand and press the mouse button with your right? I prefer to just right-click.</strong>
<hr></blockquote>
Like I said earlier, I can't right-click and in the last 5 years I've never needed to.
[quote]
<strong>The one-button mouse is the perfect example of Apple arrogance and stubborness. A/W Maya necessitates the use of a 3-button mouse. Games need at least 2 buttons. Apple wants users from the 3-D and game worlds to use their hardware.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
If you're using Maya you will be able to afford a professional quality 3 button mouse anyway. And your average gamer happily buys $100 controllers to play better. There's no need there.
[quote]<strong>
It doesn't make sense. Give us the standard option of using 2-buttons! Those who prefer to can still ignore the 2nd button.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
If the standard is 2 buttons, developers will code for 2 buttons, meaning applications will need 2 buttons. 1 button users lose out.
If the standard is 1 button, developers code for 1 button but know 2 button support is there, meaning applications support both 1 and 2 buttons.
The other point is that only supplying a 1 button mouse leaves a nice after-market gap for 3rd parties like Logitech, MS and Kensington. Apple needs them as much as they need Apple.
As for your comment about "industry standard" technologies...who do you think is establishing these standards? [...] Apple used a proprietary slot technology called "nubus" while wintel compatible hardware used PCI slots.</strong><hr></blockquote>
NuBus was actually an open standard invented and promulgated by MIT. It seems proprietary only because Apple embraced it and everyone else adopted Intel's proprietary PCI.
<strong>Think before you speak. A two button mouse or more will not ruin your world. It is actually vey handy to run an Apple with more than one button. The default for the second button is control-click which is handy. If you have more buttons you can program them to do whatever you want.
Apple keyboards and mice are fine, but Microsoft is actually the leader in delivering affordable ergonomic interface products. As much as we love to hate them, Microsoft mice and keyboards are much better to use than Apple's interms of avoiding repetative strain injuries. And you don't have to use the extra buttons if you don't want to. The scroll wheel is hard to live without once you have used one though.
This is a repost... but I can't be bothered repeating the same arguments each time.
I use a Pro mouse (when I use a mouse - I have a laptop) and would never use a mouse with more than one button. From an ergonomic point of view, it forces you to sit your hand in a certain direction, to hit the left button most of the time, or to move your finger over the button to press it. I can't stand this, for the same reason I can't stand a QWERTY keyboard (yes I use Dvorak). Technology should NOT make my hand ache. One button is the only way to go from that respect. If I need a context menu, it's no loss to control click, compared to what a two button mouse does to my hand. For me it's not about simplicity, it's about ergonomics and RSI.
Therefore, with your other point, I would throw out any mouse that isn't one button! That's assuming I could find another single button mouse... does anyone else make them?
Another repost, from same thread as above comment...
[quote]
For first-time multi-button mouse users there's a period of familarization with the finger movement. As time goes by and you utilize the mouse you'll wonder how you were ever productive without it.<hr></blockquote>
The majority of time I use a mouse, it's a 3 button (or two button with scroll wheel) Logitech one that's standard issue at college. At home I tend to use the trackpad on my Pismo. I'm not a multi-button mouse newbie, I just hate the damned things. I also don't agree with having a menubar AND a context menu (stick to one - the Acorn was excellent in using just a context menu - the Mac has traditionally been great at using just a menubar). But that's another argument.
My point is, I'm not unused to many buttons. I'm not just not realising what I'm missing. I know full well what I'm missing and wouldn't have it any other way! Ergonomics are very important to me - I type on Dvorak layout to guard against RSI, etc... - and I find the way a multi-button mouse twists your hand is uncomfortable and unpleasant.
Mapping the buttons both as left-click is also no good. If that happens, I'd be double clicking (one click with each button) every time I tried to click on something. There is no substitute for a single button mouse :-)
Look at Apple's market here... 5% of all computers. What percentage of that are geeks like us? Or people who are really too lazy to hold down the control key or just buy a replacement mouse? Not too many..
If Apple tried to satisfy all of you goobers, they'd have 51 product lines, two dozen models of each, all in assorted shades of every imaginable Pantone color. Plus several dozen different types/shapes/button arrangements of mice per each shade.
I think it's better to leave it with simplicity, for mainstream users. Maybe in the future we could have a separate "rock" click and "press" click, for multiple button function, but in the meantime just let third party manufacturers satisfy niche markets like this..
As far as I can tell, in certain other platforms, functions are assigned more or less randomly to the different buttons. To avoid this kind of mess, I think Apple should wait until most of the applications are ported to OS X before they start introducing more buttons. Personally, I like one button though. For what I do, either one button is enough, or I need a whole keyboard worth of hotkeys.
The more I think about it, the more I think that 1 button plus scroll wheel is the way to go. Maybe the scroll wheel shouldn't even click, but just be there to auto scroll whatever document you have the pointer positioned over.
In this way there would effectively be no second button to pursuade devs to change the interface paradigm. Just a convenient way to scroll through documents, web pages, and menus.
I'm still thinking about that two mice per keyboard idea. I don't think apple should do it, but I'm starting to think that it might be a handy little hack to have two pointers on the screen.
<strong>An Apple two-button mouse would be awsome, but even better if it utalized the newly-implimented bluetooth for OSX. Apple even suggests using the bluetooth adapeter for "keyboards, mice, etc.". Is anyone aware of any manufactureres of bluetooth-based keyboards or mice? MS's wireless mouse comes with a reciver, so I suspect it's not bluetooth.</strong><hr></blockquote>
<strong>An Apple two-button mouse would be awsome, but even better if it utalized the newly-implimented bluetooth for OSX. Apple even suggests using the bluetooth adapeter for "keyboards, mice, etc.". Is anyone aware of any manufactureres of bluetooth-based keyboards or mice? MS's wireless mouse comes with a reciver, so I suspect it's not bluetooth.</strong><hr></blockquote>
What do you think of a wireless/remote control mouse that uses blue tooth for the mac? It can be used in two different ways either a remote control for presentations etc or as a regular mouse without the terrible wires <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
<strong>The more I think about it, the more I think that 1 button plus scroll wheel is the way to go. Maybe the scroll wheel shouldn't even click, but just be there to auto scroll whatever document you have the pointer positioned over.</strong><hr></blockquote>
If they offer a scrolling function, I'd like them to revisit the interface. I've never been crazy about scroll wheels.
If they can roll out a no-button mouse, they can roll out a mouse with more ergonomic scrolling capabilities. I don't really care, though. I'm used enough to scroll bars that I prefer them even when I'm sitting at my Windows machine with my two-button-and-scroll-wheel mouse.
<strong>The more I think about it, the more I think that 1 button plus scroll wheel is the way to go. Maybe the scroll wheel shouldn't even click, but just be there to auto scroll whatever document you have the pointer positioned over.
In this way there would effectively be no second button to pursuade devs to change the interface paradigm. Just a convenient way to scroll through documents, web pages, and menus.
I'm still thinking about that two mice per keyboard idea. I don't think apple should do it, but I'm starting to think that it might be a handy little hack to have two pointers on the screen.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Matsu i have exactly the same idea, one button and a scroll wheel. It would be perfect for surf and as easy to use than the current apple mouse .
I fear that Apple will not make an mouse with a wheel just for some crappy design problems, because add a design wheel is not so simple. But design whitout ergonomia is worthless.
So let's make a petition and send it to Cupertino : we want a new mouse with a wheel !
1) Steve Jobs hates scroll wheels. Therefore the chances of Apple giving us one are slim to none.
2) Apple needs the support of third party peripheral manufactures. If Apple were to introduce a two-button scroll wheel mouse, what would happen to the likes of Logitech and Kensington? Mac support would go bye-bye.
Comments
The one-button mouse is the perfect example of Apple arrogance and stubborness. A/W Maya necessitates the use of a 3-button mouse. Games need at least 2 buttons. Apple wants users from the 3-D and game worlds to use their hardware.
It doesn't make sense. Give us the standard option of using 2-buttons! Those who prefer to can still ignore the 2nd button.
[ 04-02-2002: Message edited by: hir ]</p>
<strong>Simplicity? Is it simpler to press the control key on the keyboard with your left hand and press the mouse button with your right? I prefer to just right-click.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I prefer to click-and-hold, when I use contextual menus at all. They're slower than menubar menus, because you have to mouse more precisely. Multi-button mice, in addition to being more confusing for new users and cumbersome for kids, also aggravate wrist problems. It's much more ergonomic to click with several naturally-positioned fingers at once, or by rocking your whole hand forward if you're a child, than it is to single out one digit repeatedly.
[quote]<strong>The one-button mouse is the perfect example of Apple arrogance and stubborness. A/W Maya necessitates the use of a 3-button mouse. Games need at least 2 buttons.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Most UNIX apps require 3 button mice, because that's what every UNIX workstation since the original XTerms have shipped with. Most games are written for Windows, which has always used 2 button mice. Developers will code for their target interface. That alone is enough reason for Apple should stick to a one-button default.
It's important to realize that Apple's mouse isn't one button because it's primitive - the mice Steve saw when he toured Palo Alto had 3 buttons. The Apple HI team pared the Apple mouse down to one button as a result of their exhaustive usability research. Modern operating systems are not so much more elaborate that they require multiple buttons; instead, what happens is that a lot of developers and designers (of e.g. the Windows interface) have realized that if you push system complexity out to the user, you save yourself a great deal of trouble designing the interface. The end user ends up paying the cost in terms of a steeper learning curve and decreased usability, but who's counting?
Anyone who is serious about gaming or Maya or some other specialty can choose from myriad 2, 3, 5, or n button mice and trackballs and who knows what else, some of them tailored to specific applications. I can't figure out why Apple should go into this market, considering that it puts them in competition with their third party hardware developers and buys them nothing.
[quote]<strong>Apple wants users from the 3-D and game worlds to use their hardware.</strong><hr></blockquote>
People in the gaming world are already used to buying specialty mice like the Boomslang; people in the UNIX market are used to spending so much on hardware that they won't even notice the extra cost of a 3 (or 4, or 10) button mouse compared to the savings realized by buying a Mac. Apple has already accomodated these needs in the best way they could have, by making sure that more elaborate mice and mouse substitutes just work, right out of the box.
You are correct--MS copied most of their GUI from Apple. I don't see what that has to do with Apple ripping off MS. The two are not mutually exclusive.
As for your comment about "industry standard" technologies...who do you think is establishing these standards? Intel invented USB. Apple used a proprietary slot technology called "nubus" while wintel compatible hardware used PCI slots. Apple adopted PCI and USB so Apple hardware would be compatible with cards and peripherals that were being manufactured for the dominant platform (wintel). They also adopted AGP from the Wintel platform.
<strong>Simplicity? Is it simpler to press the control key on the keyboard with your left hand and press the mouse button with your right? I prefer to just right-click.</strong>
<hr></blockquote>
Like I said earlier, I can't right-click and in the last 5 years I've never needed to.
[quote]
<strong>The one-button mouse is the perfect example of Apple arrogance and stubborness. A/W Maya necessitates the use of a 3-button mouse. Games need at least 2 buttons. Apple wants users from the 3-D and game worlds to use their hardware.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
If you're using Maya you will be able to afford a professional quality 3 button mouse anyway. And your average gamer happily buys $100 controllers to play better. There's no need there.
[quote]<strong>
It doesn't make sense. Give us the standard option of using 2-buttons! Those who prefer to can still ignore the 2nd button.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
If the standard is 2 buttons, developers will code for 2 buttons, meaning applications will need 2 buttons. 1 button users lose out.
If the standard is 1 button, developers code for 1 button but know 2 button support is there, meaning applications support both 1 and 2 buttons.
The other point is that only supplying a 1 button mouse leaves a nice after-market gap for 3rd parties like Logitech, MS and Kensington. Apple needs them as much as they need Apple.
<strong>
As for your comment about "industry standard" technologies...who do you think is establishing these standards? [...] Apple used a proprietary slot technology called "nubus" while wintel compatible hardware used PCI slots.</strong><hr></blockquote>
NuBus was actually an open standard invented and promulgated by MIT. It seems proprietary only because Apple embraced it and everyone else adopted Intel's proprietary PCI.
<strong>Think before you speak. A two button mouse or more will not ruin your world. It is actually vey handy to run an Apple with more than one button. The default for the second button is control-click which is handy. If you have more buttons you can program them to do whatever you want.
Apple keyboards and mice are fine, but Microsoft is actually the leader in delivering affordable ergonomic interface products. As much as we love to hate them, Microsoft mice and keyboards are much better to use than Apple's interms of avoiding repetative strain injuries. And you don't have to use the extra buttons if you don't want to. The scroll wheel is hard to live without once you have used one though.
[ 04-02-2002: Message edited by: gafferino ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
This is a repost... but I can't be bothered repeating the same arguments each time.
I use a Pro mouse (when I use a mouse - I have a laptop) and would never use a mouse with more than one button. From an ergonomic point of view, it forces you to sit your hand in a certain direction, to hit the left button most of the time, or to move your finger over the button to press it. I can't stand this, for the same reason I can't stand a QWERTY keyboard (yes I use Dvorak). Technology should NOT make my hand ache. One button is the only way to go from that respect. If I need a context menu, it's no loss to control click, compared to what a two button mouse does to my hand. For me it's not about simplicity, it's about ergonomics and RSI.
Therefore, with your other point, I would throw out any mouse that isn't one button! That's assuming I could find another single button mouse... does anyone else make them?
Amorya
[quote]
For first-time multi-button mouse users there's a period of familarization with the finger movement. As time goes by and you utilize the mouse you'll wonder how you were ever productive without it.<hr></blockquote>
The majority of time I use a mouse, it's a 3 button (or two button with scroll wheel) Logitech one that's standard issue at college. At home I tend to use the trackpad on my Pismo. I'm not a multi-button mouse newbie, I just hate the damned things. I also don't agree with having a menubar AND a context menu (stick to one - the Acorn was excellent in using just a context menu - the Mac has traditionally been great at using just a menubar). But that's another argument.
My point is, I'm not unused to many buttons. I'm not just not realising what I'm missing. I know full well what I'm missing and wouldn't have it any other way! Ergonomics are very important to me - I type on Dvorak layout to guard against RSI, etc... - and I find the way a multi-button mouse twists your hand is uncomfortable and unpleasant.
Mapping the buttons both as left-click is also no good. If that happens, I'd be double clicking (one click with each button) every time I tried to click on something. There is no substitute for a single button mouse :-)
Amorya
Look at Apple's market here... 5% of all computers. What percentage of that are geeks like us? Or people who are really too lazy to hold down the control key or just buy a replacement mouse? Not too many..
If Apple tried to satisfy all of you goobers, they'd have 51 product lines, two dozen models of each, all in assorted shades of every imaginable Pantone color. Plus several dozen different types/shapes/button arrangements of mice per each shade.
I think it's better to leave it with simplicity, for mainstream users. Maybe in the future we could have a separate "rock" click and "press" click, for multiple button function, but in the meantime just let third party manufacturers satisfy niche markets like this..
In this way there would effectively be no second button to pursuade devs to change the interface paradigm. Just a convenient way to scroll through documents, web pages, and menus.
I'm still thinking about that two mice per keyboard idea. I don't think apple should do it, but I'm starting to think that it might be a handy little hack to have two pointers on the screen.
<strong>An Apple two-button mouse would be awsome, but even better if it utalized the newly-implimented bluetooth for OSX. Apple even suggests using the bluetooth adapeter for "keyboards, mice, etc.". Is anyone aware of any manufactureres of bluetooth-based keyboards or mice? MS's wireless mouse comes with a reciver, so I suspect it's not bluetooth.</strong><hr></blockquote>
<strong>An Apple two-button mouse would be awsome, but even better if it utalized the newly-implimented bluetooth for OSX. Apple even suggests using the bluetooth adapeter for "keyboards, mice, etc.". Is anyone aware of any manufactureres of bluetooth-based keyboards or mice? MS's wireless mouse comes with a reciver, so I suspect it's not bluetooth.</strong><hr></blockquote>
What do you think of a wireless/remote control mouse that uses blue tooth for the mac? It can be used in two different ways either a remote control for presentations etc or as a regular mouse without the terrible wires
<strong>The more I think about it, the more I think that 1 button plus scroll wheel is the way to go. Maybe the scroll wheel shouldn't even click, but just be there to auto scroll whatever document you have the pointer positioned over.</strong><hr></blockquote>
If they offer a scrolling function, I'd like them to revisit the interface. I've never been crazy about scroll wheels.
If they can roll out a no-button mouse, they can roll out a mouse with more ergonomic scrolling capabilities. I don't really care, though. I'm used enough to scroll bars that I prefer them even when I'm sitting at my Windows machine with my two-button-and-scroll-wheel mouse.
<strong>The more I think about it, the more I think that 1 button plus scroll wheel is the way to go. Maybe the scroll wheel shouldn't even click, but just be there to auto scroll whatever document you have the pointer positioned over.
In this way there would effectively be no second button to pursuade devs to change the interface paradigm. Just a convenient way to scroll through documents, web pages, and menus.
I'm still thinking about that two mice per keyboard idea. I don't think apple should do it, but I'm starting to think that it might be a handy little hack to have two pointers on the screen.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Matsu i have exactly the same idea, one button and a scroll wheel. It would be perfect for surf and as easy to use than the current apple mouse .
I fear that Apple will not make an mouse with a wheel just for some crappy design problems, because add a design wheel is not so simple. But design whitout ergonomia is worthless.
So let's make a petition and send it to Cupertino : we want a new mouse with a wheel !
[ 04-08-2002: Message edited by: powerdoc ]</p>
2) Apple needs the support of third party peripheral manufactures. If Apple were to introduce a two-button scroll wheel mouse, what would happen to the likes of Logitech and Kensington? Mac support would go bye-bye.
Even Apple one day releases the 2 button + scroll wheel mouse I will keep using third party mouse anyway
By the way.....five button mouse ROCKS
<strong>Yes lik they dropped support for Windows when MS brough out it's two button scrolling mouse.</strong><hr></blockquote>
The difference being that your average copy of Windows, unlike Macs, does not come bundled with a mouse already.
Bye,
RazzFazz
<strong>1) Steve Jobs hates scroll wheels. Therefore the chances of Apple giving us one are slim to none.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
How do you know that?