And that's to say nothing of unix users. Unix uses a three button mouse, period. So unix-switchers would be like, wtf? One button?! No contextual menus? No scrolling?!!
I'd like to see Apple put two-buttons plus scrollwheel on the Powerbook's trackpad, let alone their mice. Scrolling w/ you index finger is so much more convenient (and intuitive!) than clicking a mouse on a scroll bar arrow.
1. Not one person that ever learned how to use a 2 button mouse properly ever wanted their 1 button mouse back.
2. If you can't figure out how to use a 2 button mouse your dumber than dirt or haven't applied 5 minutes to the process and will probably hurt yourself at some point using a computer.
3. Apple should include a 2 button scroll wheel mouse with all G5 towers.
First two points? Absolute nonsense.
Last point? An opinion.
Not everyone likes a 2 button mouse, just like some people don't like multi button mice, and why some people don't like one button. Why can't people accept that... Each to their own.
I think the best outcome is giving the consumer the option to choose...
Nowhere did I say anything REMOTELY along the lines of Apple coming up with a "5 button...charging station" mouse.
To me, THOSE mice are higher-end, "pro" offerings. I wouldn't even use those types of devices and I've been doing this for 10 years...those things confuse ME!
How hard can two buttons be? Left one: clicks, right one: brings up a cute little menu pertaining to whatever you've got highlighted or are working on at the moment.
According to the number of times I've seen the people in my (all Windows) shop fumble them, it's pretty hard. Hell on the hands, too. Your fingers aren't designed to work that way for long periods.
Scroll wheels are even worse from an ergonomic point of view, and if "everyone" uses them, that help explains the billions of dollars lost every year to RSI.
The default single button mice also encourage developers to keep all the application options available as menu items and on-screen widgets. You'd be amazed at the number of professional windows apps I've seen where whole swaths of options were only available from a dialog box summoned from a context menu. Why? Because it's there.
Apple's particular single button mouse is also much friendlier to young children. Never forget that part of the school/home market.
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And a scroll wheel? Isn't nearly EVERYONE on the Internet at this point? Who wouldn't prefer keeping their cursor in position and simply rolling a tiny dial to go up or down through a web page or document?
Those of us (like me) who can feel the constriction in our wrists, for one. I have a two-button scroller at work, and I never use the scroll wheel. I make my living at a keyboard, and nearly every one of my hobbies (computers again, and drums) is hard on my wrists and hands. I don't want to become like too many of my colleagues in wrist braces.
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Honestly now...anyone who can't truly get a grip on 2 stupid buttons and a little scroll wheel probably shouldn't be sitting in front of a computer to begin with.
That's exactly what the DOS wizards said about Macintoshes in 1984. It is not the user's responsibility to adapt to the tool. It is the tool's responsibility to be adapted to the user. Any consumer appliance whose utility is not self-evident right out of the box is broken.
Quote:
Do you no think it's MORE of a hassle for new Mac users to have to learn to reach up and press the control key if they want that menu? Or to slide over and push and arrow to scroll on a website or Word file? I do. How efficient or smooth is that? Why use two hands to do something when one will do (no jokes please)?
I've never noticed (I prefer click-and-hold to bring up context menus anyway). But there's always one hand on the keyboard, and that one hand has immediate access to all the modifier keys.
I'm so used to using scrollbars (or the space bar, or home/end) to get around documents that I don't really notice it anymore. Even though I'll grant that the scroll wheel is superficially more convenient, it's not worth the (literal) pain on my wrists to get used to it.
Quote:
Moreover, here's something key: there are probably very few true, literal "newbies", in the sense of NEVER having touched a computer. It's 2003, and either through friends, family, school, neighbors, the local library, etc. most "newbies" have, at least ONCE, sat at a computer for one reason or another. And I imagine it's safe to assume that 98% or so of those computers were PCs. They probably quickly figured out "oh, this button here makes this little menu pop up...neat! Hmmm, and this little wheel...hey, the page is moving up and down! Cool...I like this!"
Some have, and some haven't. I'd be willing to bet that most people do exactly what a "computer expert" friend or relative told them to do, and are otherwise terrified of their machines and disinclined to explore. Windows does nothing to discourage that mentality.
Quote:
[new user gets frustrated, buys two-button mouse, gripes]
THAT is most likely the true, real-life scenario that goes on. I'd just about wager a vital internal organ on it.
You're welcome to come out and help me out with all the people who I have to guide through astonishingly straightforward actions, including the by now depressingly familiar "right click. No, right. The other button" litany. I've wished more than once that contextual menus didn't exist, and when I write directions for people I never use them. Labelled menus and on-screen widgets are far more intuitive, and far more easy to explain to people, in my long and bitter experience doing the explaining.
This, of course, is not their fault. Most of these people are perfectly intelligent. The fault lies with the design of the system they're using, and their well-earned fear that if they do something wrong, they'll break the machine.
Not everyone likes a 2 button mouse, just like some people don't like multi button mice, and why some people don't like one button. Why can't people accept that... Each to their own.
I think the best outcome is giving the consumer the option to choose...
Your correct, I should have added at the beginning "any intelligent person or working professional"!
At this point, who really needs a G5, but a working professional or game geek? Imacs are for those that can't handle 2 buttons.
Amorph, that just sounds like less a fault of the mouse than, perhaps, less-than-on-the-ball people?
If you honestly have to say "right button...no, the OTHER right button...".
\
They might be better served with an Etch-A-Sketch.
Different environments, conditions and surroundings, I suppose. For all your experiences of people struggling with the 2 buttons, mine have been people asking - time and again - "...how come your computer only came with a mouse that has one button? Now I gotta..." [proceeds to grumble]
Amorph, that just sounds like less a fault of the mouse than, perhaps, less-than-on-the-ball people?
We're the #1 cancer registry in the country overall. I think we're on the ball.
Quote:
If you honestly have to say "right button...no, the OTHER right button...".
They're not used to using it. Anything unfamiliar takes a second to adjust to. There isn't any need for them to use context menus for what they do, so they don't. In fact, there should never be a need to use a context menu. They're luxuries.
Based on my experience, I'd say that one-button mice continue to be more intuitive. Certainly, they're that much more straightforward.
Quote:
Different environments, conditions and surroundings, I suppose. For all your experiences of people struggling with the 2 buttons, mine have been people asking - time and again - "...how come your computer only came with a mouse that has one button? Now I gotta..." [proceeds to grumble]
[double, no triple post?...sorry...hahaha...after dinging people for not knowing how to use a mouse, I let it be known I can't push the right "submit" buttons ]
For me. For you. For others. Some people just don't ever seem to grasp much of anything, unfortunately.
Would be like me writing Javascript in Hebrew while hanging upside down...just ain't gonna happen in any way, shape or form.
As far as the cancer registry place, cool. But that doesn't necessarily signify too much...I've worked at two major Federal/Military installations, a fairly sizable newspaper and a high-end book publisher in San Diego...all three were teeming with people of questionable intelligence and ability to comprehend some REALLY basic stuff, who - by all outward appearances, status and pay scale - seemed to have their crap together. Nope.
Best we can hope for - so everyone is pleased - is that Apple continues the one-button thing, I guess (since many here think it's the cat's meow). But because it's Apple, I'd trust them to design and sell a 2-button/scroll wheel mouse that trumps most others out there, and is made available to those that want it.
And if not, then we'll just stick with the standard third-party vendors. I think they're missing a golden opportunity, though.
For crying out loud, none of you will ever be totally happy with any mouse that Apple includes with their machines. I honestly don't expect Apple to give me much of anything where a mouse is concerned, because they know (if I'm buying a G5) that I'm probably going to use my own anyway.
For me. For you. For others. Some people just don't ever seem to grasp much of anything, unfortunately.
Well, again, this is a design issue. Given that people who do good work in specialized positions often can't get around very well on a computer, anyone designing a computer has room - and, I would argue, an obligation - to figure out why computers are so unintuitive to so many people, and improve their design accordingly. I mean, some of the people who can barely get around a personal computer are prodigiously, in one case frighteningly, intelligent. So, again, it's not the user's fault. It's bad design.
Remember, the Mac was the computer for people who didn't "get" computers, and that's what it should always be.
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Best we can hope for - so everyone is pleased - is that Apple continues the one-button thing, I guess (since many here think it's the cat's meow). But because it's Apple, I'd trust them to design and sell a 2-button/scroll wheel mouse that trumps most others out there, and is made available to those that want it.
And if not, then we'll just stick with the standard third-party vendors. I think they're missing a golden opportunity, though.
I should emphasize that I'm not ideologically opposed to the idea that a pointing device could be more expressive than the one-button mouse currently is. If Apple can find a design that intuitively and ergonomically is capable of more than "click" and "drag" - if they can implement it in a way that seems straightforward to, say, my grandmother - then great! My beef is with the particular implementation that the Windows world has settled on, which sucks on a number of levels, including one which is literally harmful; and also on the negative impact that multi-button mice have had on application design where they are standard (in Windows and *shudder* graphical UNIXen). Few things piss me off more than critical functionality hidden behind a button that most people never use.
Remember, the Mac was the computer for people who didn't "get" computers, and that's what it should always be.
No it shouldn't because people and society is changing. In another generation or so there aren't going to be any more people left who don't "get" computers. It has changed since 1984 and so should Apple's business philosophy. Apple, historically, has made extraordinarily bad business decisions over the course of its existence and the fact that they only have like 3% market share is testimony to how badly they've been. They've had the best OS and some of the best design hardware that's ever been introduced into the computer industry and yet they remain a relatively niche market.
To alienate the 98.5% (97% PC and 50% Mac) computer users out there that either use or want to use a multi button mouse is just plain stupid. It will be just as stupid for them to charge an upgrade price for a "pro" mouse if they do come out with one. For Apple to charge $3000 for a computer and then ask the customer to fork up another $40 for a "pro" mouse is just absurd. If anything, they should charge the users to "downgrade" their mouse to a one button one if they do offer two different solutions.
Another point: given the fact that Apple prides itself on the aesthetics of its computers, forcing a user to purchase a third party mouse, which wouldn't match the machine in looks, counters that philosophy.
In short, to not make multi button mice standard on all of their machines is ludicrous. If people don't want to use the second button they don't have to. Also, Apple could put options in the OS to either disable the second button or make both buttons behave the same, so as not to alienate the 1.5% computer users who prefer the single option.
It'd be great if they could figure out a way to add the functionality of a 2nd mouse button and a scroll wheel without losing the ability to just mash the mouse down to click. I've used the Apple Pro Mouse religiously since I bought it and I'm so used to tapping ctrl that I hardly even notice it anymore.
For people "scared" by the two button mouse, they could perhaps special order their machine with a single button.
I have never seen anybody scared by a mouse with any number of buttons. If the mouse you are talking about has buttons (i.e. it doesn't have a tail, nor does it run like mad from your cat), even the worst of cowards won't get scared. In the world where 100% of PC users and 95% of Mac users have used a multi-button mouse at least once, having a one-button mouse should be considered not normal. If Apple developers liked single buttons, they would not build the whole OS X interface around 2 buttons and they would not implement scrollwheel support better than in Windows. When I first tried the scrollwheel in OS X, I was shocked at how well it is done. Since that day I just don't understand the whole fashion thing about one button and no scrollwheel in a pro mouse. What exactly makes it a pro one? Constantly having one finger on the Control key? Is it really so cool?
The reason I think Apple has stuck with the one button is that they want people to learn the keyboard shortcuts. Knowing these shortcuts is even faster than mousing all over the place.
That said, it's time for more than just the 1 button. The shortcuts are a little too inconsistant, and beginners aren't going to know them right away.
You know what? We have fallen into a bad habit of discussing one-button mice. Apple, AFAIK, is the only maker of these. Most of computer users don't even know there may be a market for one-button mice. Most of them have never seen such primitive devices. And we are discussing this sort of things seriously. Unbelievable. Shame on Apple. If they began selling 3-button mice five years ago, who would discuss it now? Even the most die-hard Jobs-admirers would not be able to recall why they liked one-button mice. Shame on Apple. How does Jobs justify it? Is there any excuse at all?
Am I the only one that loves the one button mouse?
I want Apple to keep them, if U prefer a 100 button mouse why don´t U buy one?
You can disable all buttons that confuse you, live with the advancment in technology.
A one button mouse is usless to the professional working on a G5. If you Not a working professional, you don't need a G5. Buy an imac and ask steve for the 1 button round mouse.
Comments
because if I'm wrong, I'm mailing a fresh $1 US bill to the first 5 people that call me on it.
Only the 1st five?
Man thats cheap.
I'd like to see Apple put two-buttons plus scrollwheel on the Powerbook's trackpad, let alone their mice. Scrolling w/ you index finger is so much more convenient (and intuitive!) than clicking a mouse on a scroll bar arrow.
C'mon apple!
Originally posted by zoozx27
Some facts:
1. Not one person that ever learned how to use a 2 button mouse properly ever wanted their 1 button mouse back.
2. If you can't figure out how to use a 2 button mouse your dumber than dirt or haven't applied 5 minutes to the process and will probably hurt yourself at some point using a computer.
3. Apple should include a 2 button scroll wheel mouse with all G5 towers.
First two points? Absolute nonsense.
Last point? An opinion.
Not everyone likes a 2 button mouse, just like some people don't like multi button mice, and why some people don't like one button. Why can't people accept that... Each to their own.
I think the best outcome is giving the consumer the option to choose...
Originally posted by pscates
Nowhere did I say anything REMOTELY along the lines of Apple coming up with a "5 button...charging station" mouse.
To me, THOSE mice are higher-end, "pro" offerings. I wouldn't even use those types of devices and I've been doing this for 10 years...those things confuse ME!
How hard can two buttons be? Left one: clicks, right one: brings up a cute little menu pertaining to whatever you've got highlighted or are working on at the moment.
According to the number of times I've seen the people in my (all Windows) shop fumble them, it's pretty hard. Hell on the hands, too. Your fingers aren't designed to work that way for long periods.
Scroll wheels are even worse from an ergonomic point of view, and if "everyone" uses them, that help explains the billions of dollars lost every year to RSI.
The default single button mice also encourage developers to keep all the application options available as menu items and on-screen widgets. You'd be amazed at the number of professional windows apps I've seen where whole swaths of options were only available from a dialog box summoned from a context menu. Why? Because it's there.
Apple's particular single button mouse is also much friendlier to young children. Never forget that part of the school/home market.
And a scroll wheel? Isn't nearly EVERYONE on the Internet at this point? Who wouldn't prefer keeping their cursor in position and simply rolling a tiny dial to go up or down through a web page or document?
Those of us (like me) who can feel the constriction in our wrists, for one. I have a two-button scroller at work, and I never use the scroll wheel. I make my living at a keyboard, and nearly every one of my hobbies (computers again, and drums) is hard on my wrists and hands. I don't want to become like too many of my colleagues in wrist braces.
Honestly now...anyone who can't truly get a grip on 2 stupid buttons and a little scroll wheel probably shouldn't be sitting in front of a computer to begin with.
That's exactly what the DOS wizards said about Macintoshes in 1984. It is not the user's responsibility to adapt to the tool. It is the tool's responsibility to be adapted to the user. Any consumer appliance whose utility is not self-evident right out of the box is broken.
Do you no think it's MORE of a hassle for new Mac users to have to learn to reach up and press the control key if they want that menu? Or to slide over and push and arrow to scroll on a website or Word file? I do. How efficient or smooth is that? Why use two hands to do something when one will do (no jokes please)?
I've never noticed (I prefer click-and-hold to bring up context menus anyway). But there's always one hand on the keyboard, and that one hand has immediate access to all the modifier keys.
I'm so used to using scrollbars (or the space bar, or home/end) to get around documents that I don't really notice it anymore. Even though I'll grant that the scroll wheel is superficially more convenient, it's not worth the (literal) pain on my wrists to get used to it.
Moreover, here's something key: there are probably very few true, literal "newbies", in the sense of NEVER having touched a computer. It's 2003, and either through friends, family, school, neighbors, the local library, etc. most "newbies" have, at least ONCE, sat at a computer for one reason or another. And I imagine it's safe to assume that 98% or so of those computers were PCs. They probably quickly figured out "oh, this button here makes this little menu pop up...neat! Hmmm, and this little wheel...hey, the page is moving up and down! Cool...I like this!"
Some have, and some haven't. I'd be willing to bet that most people do exactly what a "computer expert" friend or relative told them to do, and are otherwise terrified of their machines and disinclined to explore. Windows does nothing to discourage that mentality.
[new user gets frustrated, buys two-button mouse, gripes]
THAT is most likely the true, real-life scenario that goes on. I'd just about wager a vital internal organ on it.
You're welcome to come out and help me out with all the people who I have to guide through astonishingly straightforward actions, including the by now depressingly familiar "right click. No, right. The other button" litany. I've wished more than once that contextual menus didn't exist, and when I write directions for people I never use them. Labelled menus and on-screen widgets are far more intuitive, and far more easy to explain to people, in my long and bitter experience doing the explaining.
This, of course, is not their fault. Most of these people are perfectly intelligent. The fault lies with the design of the system they're using, and their well-earned fear that if they do something wrong, they'll break the machine.
Originally posted by Marcus
First two points? Absolute nonsense.
Last point? An opinion.
Not everyone likes a 2 button mouse, just like some people don't like multi button mice, and why some people don't like one button. Why can't people accept that... Each to their own.
I think the best outcome is giving the consumer the option to choose...
Your correct, I should have added at the beginning "any intelligent person or working professional"!
At this point, who really needs a G5, but a working professional or game geek? Imacs are for those that can't handle 2 buttons.
If you honestly have to say "right button...no, the OTHER right button...".
They might be better served with an Etch-A-Sketch.
Different environments, conditions and surroundings, I suppose. For all your experiences of people struggling with the 2 buttons, mine have been people asking - time and again - "...how come your computer only came with a mouse that has one button? Now I gotta..." [proceeds to grumble]
Originally posted by pscates
Amorph, that just sounds like less a fault of the mouse than, perhaps, less-than-on-the-ball people?
We're the #1 cancer registry in the country overall. I think we're on the ball.
If you honestly have to say "right button...no, the OTHER right button...".
They're not used to using it. Anything unfamiliar takes a second to adjust to. There isn't any need for them to use context menus for what they do, so they don't. In fact, there should never be a need to use a context menu. They're luxuries.
Based on my experience, I'd say that one-button mice continue to be more intuitive. Certainly, they're that much more straightforward.
Different environments, conditions and surroundings, I suppose. For all your experiences of people struggling with the 2 buttons, mine have been people asking - time and again - "...how come your computer only came with a mouse that has one button? Now I gotta..." [proceeds to grumble]
Anything unfamiliar takes a second to adjust to.
Would be like me writing Javascript in Hebrew while hanging upside down...just ain't gonna happen in any way, shape or form.
As far as the cancer registry place, cool. But that doesn't necessarily signify too much...I've worked at two major Federal/Military installations, a fairly sizable newspaper and a high-end book publisher in San Diego...all three were teeming with people of questionable intelligence and ability to comprehend some REALLY basic stuff, who - by all outward appearances, status and pay scale - seemed to have their crap together. Nope.
Best we can hope for - so everyone is pleased - is that Apple continues the one-button thing, I guess (since many here think it's the cat's meow). But because it's Apple, I'd trust them to design and sell a 2-button/scroll wheel mouse that trumps most others out there, and is made available to those that want it.
And if not, then we'll just stick with the standard third-party vendors. I think they're missing a golden opportunity, though.
For crying out loud, none of you will ever be totally happy with any mouse that Apple includes with their machines. I honestly don't expect Apple to give me much of anything where a mouse is concerned, because they know (if I'm buying a G5) that I'm probably going to use my own anyway.
Gawd, you people do this all the time!
Originally posted by pscates
For me. For you. For others. Some people just don't ever seem to grasp much of anything, unfortunately.
Well, again, this is a design issue. Given that people who do good work in specialized positions often can't get around very well on a computer, anyone designing a computer has room - and, I would argue, an obligation - to figure out why computers are so unintuitive to so many people, and improve their design accordingly. I mean, some of the people who can barely get around a personal computer are prodigiously, in one case frighteningly, intelligent. So, again, it's not the user's fault. It's bad design.
Remember, the Mac was the computer for people who didn't "get" computers, and that's what it should always be.
Best we can hope for - so everyone is pleased - is that Apple continues the one-button thing, I guess (since many here think it's the cat's meow). But because it's Apple, I'd trust them to design and sell a 2-button/scroll wheel mouse that trumps most others out there, and is made available to those that want it.
And if not, then we'll just stick with the standard third-party vendors. I think they're missing a golden opportunity, though.
I should emphasize that I'm not ideologically opposed to the idea that a pointing device could be more expressive than the one-button mouse currently is. If Apple can find a design that intuitively and ergonomically is capable of more than "click" and "drag" - if they can implement it in a way that seems straightforward to, say, my grandmother - then great! My beef is with the particular implementation that the Windows world has settled on, which sucks on a number of levels, including one which is literally harmful; and also on the negative impact that multi-button mice have had on application design where they are standard (in Windows and *shudder* graphical UNIXen). Few things piss me off more than critical functionality hidden behind a button that most people never use.
Originally posted by Amorph
Remember, the Mac was the computer for people who didn't "get" computers, and that's what it should always be.
No it shouldn't because people and society is changing. In another generation or so there aren't going to be any more people left who don't "get" computers. It has changed since 1984 and so should Apple's business philosophy. Apple, historically, has made extraordinarily bad business decisions over the course of its existence and the fact that they only have like 3% market share is testimony to how badly they've been. They've had the best OS and some of the best design hardware that's ever been introduced into the computer industry and yet they remain a relatively niche market.
To alienate the 98.5% (97% PC and 50% Mac) computer users out there that either use or want to use a multi button mouse is just plain stupid. It will be just as stupid for them to charge an upgrade price for a "pro" mouse if they do come out with one. For Apple to charge $3000 for a computer and then ask the customer to fork up another $40 for a "pro" mouse is just absurd. If anything, they should charge the users to "downgrade" their mouse to a one button one if they do offer two different solutions.
Another point: given the fact that Apple prides itself on the aesthetics of its computers, forcing a user to purchase a third party mouse, which wouldn't match the machine in looks, counters that philosophy.
In short, to not make multi button mice standard on all of their machines is ludicrous. If people don't want to use the second button they don't have to. Also, Apple could put options in the OS to either disable the second button or make both buttons behave the same, so as not to alienate the 1.5% computer users who prefer the single option.
Regards,
Originally posted by Jeremiah Rich
For people "scared" by the two button mouse, they could perhaps special order their machine with a single button.
I have never seen anybody scared by a mouse with any number of buttons. If the mouse you are talking about has buttons (i.e. it doesn't have a tail, nor does it run like mad from your cat), even the worst of cowards won't get scared. In the world where 100% of PC users and 95% of Mac users have used a multi-button mouse at least once, having a one-button mouse should be considered not normal. If Apple developers liked single buttons, they would not build the whole OS X interface around 2 buttons and they would not implement scrollwheel support better than in Windows. When I first tried the scrollwheel in OS X, I was shocked at how well it is done. Since that day I just don't understand the whole fashion thing about one button and no scrollwheel in a pro mouse. What exactly makes it a pro one? Constantly having one finger on the Control key? Is it really so cool?
That said, it's time for more than just the 1 button. The shortcuts are a little too inconsistant, and beginners aren't going to know them right away.
I want Apple to keep them, if U prefer a 100 button mouse why don´t U buy one?
Originally posted by maclogic
Am I the only one that loves the one button mouse?
I want Apple to keep them, if U prefer a 100 button mouse why don´t U buy one?
You can disable all buttons that confuse you, live with the advancment in technology.
A one button mouse is usless to the professional working on a G5. If you Not a working professional, you don't need a G5. Buy an imac and ask steve for the 1 button round mouse.