Possible Pics Of The New Apple Mouse

The Wookie writes: "Appleinsider have some pictures of the rumoured Apple buttonless, cordless mouse here." That is one weirdass looking little device. No clue if it's legit or not, but if it's for real, it'll be one billion times better than the horrible hockey puck.

Comments

Hmmm...

[BJH]

Ther's a different take on this topic at ZDNet here. Personally, I think the artist's rendition in the ZDNet article is more likely than the rendering in the article linked above. Apple's never produced a right-hand-only peripheral, and I'd like to think they never would - in fact, they've been very careful in allowing both left- and right-handed use of their mice until now, by providing ADB ports on both sides of their keyboards (same for USB, I guess).

Other apple failed pointing devices

[eyeball]

Other failed Apple pointing devices:

• The iThighMouser - control the position of the cursor on the screen by squeezing your knees together.
• The iHeadMouse - attached to a little beenie, this pointing device uses mercury switches to track movements as you look around the screen (as long as you keep your eyes fixed forwards and move your head to point). Not to be confused with the very popular iNosePen.
• The iGrapefruitRoller - sensors track a grapefruit's position on your desk as you roll it around. Cover the grapefruit with both hands to 'click'
• The iEtch-A-Sketch (tm) - use the two wheels to move horizontally, vertically, and (psuedo) diagonally. Shake upside down to click.
• The iChopsticks - hold the chopsticks in your hand (instructions included) and click
• The iLightSaber - no description necessary

I should actually put up a web site with these parodies (on HavenCo of course, since I don't want the Apple iCops and iLawyers pounding on my door).

Re:One or two (or three) non-buttons ?

[Frymaster]

Will Apple finally understand that a second button can be really useful for a whole range of tasks

Like what? I use a mac, a sparc10(solaris) and a winders machine (for solitaire... no, really) and I've come to the conclusion that extra buttons are only there to make up for bad UI design. Let's "do the numbers":

1. The original mice concept as envisioned by Xerox had 3 buttons all doing a vairety of tasks. Apple did a bag o' research that showed that mis-hits were common amongst users learning new tasks. The solution? The double click. Imagine life without the double-click...
2. Two button mice were "developed" (note the quotes) to give users contextual menues. Contextual menues were developed to make up for the fact that a particular OS that shall remained unnamed (ok, windows) had such a terrible set of rules for system menues that it was almost impossible to get stuff done. Menues attached to application windows, menues attached document windows, menues attached to folder windows.... where the $@#%! is "copy" or "paste"? Hence, the second button.
3. Contextual menues were also the saviour to the crisis of badly designed hot keys. I want to close a window... is it ctrl-w, alt-w or alt-F4 (nobel prize for counter-intuitive design to whoever came up with that one). Quitting an application? Could be q, could be x. On the mac, quit is always cmd-Q, close is always cmd-W, undo is always Z. Always. With these commands standardized across all apps, contextual menues are unneccessary...
4. In order to get some mindshare off the Winders flock, Apple caved in and offered contextual menues. Just hold down the control key. No second mouse button required.

The current state of the multi-button-mouse is alarming. First it was two buttons, then three, then a lever, later a wheel. What's next? A second keyboard on wheels? Foot pedals?

...and for the record, I do use the middle button on the sparc mouse (which, incidentally is shaped like a paperback and has a must-use-our-mousepad-and-not-rotate-it-more-than- 45degrees optical design) but only because the keyboard commands are so hoplessly fragmented, counterintuitive and arcane that the alternative is to use the thing as a door stop.

End Rant.

"Why should we limit computers to the lies we tell them with that second mouse button?"
Frymaster, 2000, my basement

Intellimouse Technology

[Reality Master 101]

By the way, can I head off an inevitable discussion? Whenever the subject of mice comes up, people (rightly) point out that the MS optical mouse rocks. After that, people feel the need to post that optical mice are nothing new, Sun had them ten years ago, etc, etc.

Just for the record: The old optical mice required a special pad with alternating mirror/dark squares. The mouse picked up light bouncing off the squares.

The MS mouse is much more sophisticated. It actually takes an image of the surface, and digitally compares frames to determine the mouse movement. That's why you can use it on any surface, including your leg (nice for those legs-on-the-desk surfing sessions).

The Intellimouse really is pretty cool technology.

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