Ouch. That would kill your fingers. A scroll/touch thing on the side for your thumb would be easier, and cooler. All the devices with horizontal wheels for your fingers that I have seen are not menu to be mice, but used in a different position that is easier to manipulate the wheel, ie: (that thing with a wheel that was really cool and you could use it with Final Cut Pro, and now I can't find it anywhere on the web so I'll have to look at the back of all my MacAddict issues to see what it was called so I can provide linkage).
I agree with Amorph that the secret of the iPod scroll wheel is that it is operated with the thumb, not the index finger. This makes placing it on the top of a conventional mouse poor at best.
However, slap an iPod scroll wheel on one of these...
The only place the wheel makes any sense is on the side, where the thumb can get there. Your fingers are not designed to move that way. They aren't designed for the articulation used by a two-button scroll-wheel mouse either, which is a big reason why RSI is costing US industry billions a year (and why, therefore, that style of mouse is a usability disaster - injury is not useful).
Absolutely. The reason it works on an iPod mini (and that you can type on a cell-phone) is that you are holding it IN your hand and operating the scroll-wheel/keys with your thumb.
A mouse is an ergonomic disaster (regardless of the number of buttons) because your hand rests ON the mouse and you operate the buttons with stretched or near stretched fingers. Those are not designed to work like that by nature.
For a scroll-wheel mouse to work it would have to sit in your hand, which would enable your fingers to curl around it and grip it. That would, of course, require a completely new movement paradigm as it would resemble a remote control more than a mouse, as we know them now.
Moving a mouse and having the cursor/pointer echo that movement on screen is incredibly intuitive and not easily replaced by something else. The trackpad works almost as well but not quite, the joy-stick is difficult to control precisely, the little rubber clitoris on IBM Thinkpads were terrible.
Consequently, I don't see this happening and I think the diagrams and sketches in the patent application was nothing but smoke and mirrors. The iPod mini wheel is the application of that particular patent.
For a scroll-wheel mouse to work it would have to sit in your hand, which would enable your fingers to curl around it and grip it. That would, of course, require a completely new movement paradigm as it would resemble a remote control more than a mouse, as we know them now.
Um, see my post above. Keyspan Remote with an iPod scroll wheel would be sweet...
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Ouch. That would kill your fingers. A scroll/touch thing on the side for your thumb would be easier, and cooler. All the devices with horizontal wheels for your fingers that I have seen are not menu to be mice, but used in a different position that is easier to manipulate the wheel, ie: (that thing with a wheel that was really cool and you could use it with Final Cut Pro, and now I can't find it anywhere on the web so I'll have to look at the back of all my MacAddict issues to see what it was called so I can provide linkage).
However, slap an iPod scroll wheel on one of these...
Originally posted by Amorph
The only place the wheel makes any sense is on the side, where the thumb can get there. Your fingers are not designed to move that way. They aren't designed for the articulation used by a two-button scroll-wheel mouse either, which is a big reason why RSI is costing US industry billions a year (and why, therefore, that style of mouse is a usability disaster - injury is not useful).
Absolutely. The reason it works on an iPod mini (and that you can type on a cell-phone) is that you are holding it IN your hand and operating the scroll-wheel/keys with your thumb.
A mouse is an ergonomic disaster (regardless of the number of buttons) because your hand rests ON the mouse and you operate the buttons with stretched or near stretched fingers. Those are not designed to work like that by nature.
For a scroll-wheel mouse to work it would have to sit in your hand, which would enable your fingers to curl around it and grip it. That would, of course, require a completely new movement paradigm as it would resemble a remote control more than a mouse, as we know them now.
Moving a mouse and having the cursor/pointer echo that movement on screen is incredibly intuitive and not easily replaced by something else. The trackpad works almost as well but not quite, the joy-stick is difficult to control precisely, the little rubber clitoris on IBM Thinkpads were terrible.
Consequently, I don't see this happening and I think the diagrams and sketches in the patent application was nothing but smoke and mirrors. The iPod mini wheel is the application of that particular patent.
Originally posted by kroehl
For a scroll-wheel mouse to work it would have to sit in your hand, which would enable your fingers to curl around it and grip it. That would, of course, require a completely new movement paradigm as it would resemble a remote control more than a mouse, as we know them now.
Um, see my post above. Keyspan Remote with an iPod scroll wheel would be sweet...
Just when though?