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Apple Requires Three-Button Mouse for Shake 2.5
SpillerC writes "The requirements for the newest version of Shake (cross-platform: Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, Irix) will require a three-button mouse on the Mac. Are there any other Apple-produced applications (Apple owns Shake) that require a three-button mouse? Will Apple release its own three-button mouse now?"
The poster didn't suggest "standard". He (or she; I admit not knowing) suggested it might be done "at all".
Does Dell ship cad/cam tablets standard because AutoCad suggests using them?
No, but they might sell cad/cam tablets if they had the idea that more people might want them, which is what the poster was probably suggesting.
I, personally, would be very interested to see what the Apple Design Group would do for a 3-button mouse, but I'm so hooked on my lasermouse-with-mousewheel (that acts like a 3rd mouse button, in a pinch) that even snazzy design and the "Jobs Reality Field" probably couldn't pull me away from it. I'd rather see the ADG work on more important tasks.
This now concludes our broadcast day.
Shipping one-button mice is not much of a safeguard -- half the Mac people I know use aftermarket mice. The real safeguard is the Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines. Alas, Apple itself no longer seems interested in enforcing these guidelines, even for their own products. I've never used OS X, but I've heard complaints that it violates the MHIG right and left.
This is the silliest reason not to buy a TiBook I've ever heard.
You should buy it. you'll quickly discover that you don't need the extra buttons and the machine works fine without them.
The idea that you need more than one button is a false one, it simply isn't true, and you only think you do because you've been using poorly designed operating systems that make you use absurdly complicated controls (like three button mice when only one is *necessary*.)
Something tells me that TiBook would have to be an X86 running at 1/4 speed under battery too, and THEN you'd really buy it.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
dman123 writes:
> Apple went from a one-button mouse to a
> zero-button mouse. If anything, the next interface
> device will be some sort of device that depends on
> telepathy or eye movement.
An early model of the Mac telepathic interface was lent to Toho in 1996. You can see it, in operation, in the 1997 movie released in the US as "Rebirth of Mothra 2". The same movie also featured Rainbow and Aqua Mothra, and was released five months before OS X and the rainbow hued iMacs were announced.
The number of buttons on mice are platform specific:
The Macintosh is one button,
Windows is two buttons,
The X Window GUI, used on many flavors of UNIX, is three buttons.
How do you get a program requiring three buttons on a one button platform like the Mac? Simple, it was most likely first written for UNIX/X and ported.
Mac being a minority platform that is ported to alot, has to support multiple buttons, while retaining its native one button preference.
The reason why this comes up on Slashdot so often: Slashdotters are more likely to want to run X under OS X so they can run ported UNIX apps. X requires 3 buttons, and a new mouse is a lot pricier to many Slashdotters than it would be to a Shake user.
Though I wonder why someone doesn't just modify their open source X server to simulate the three (seven counting chords) buttons with the same modifiers used by the Mac on its single button. Unless you need to be able to press the middle button in concert with the Control key for some other purpose?
"What I'm thinking is different from what you are."
Belabera, "Mothra 3" 1998
an article on the subject of apple and mice at
macobserver
But that's changing the subject, isn't it? Pretty much nobody upgrades the CPU in their laptop computer, Mac or PC, so it has nothing to do with it.
I could get into the "desktop Macs are too hard to upgrade" debate with you, but it's way off the topic of the thread.
Getting back on topic, you simply will not get more ! for your $ in a laptop than buying a Mac. Their CPU's run cooler (and on less power) than either AMD or Intel chips, which allows them to run full-speed and fanless for hours on a single battery. They've got pretty much every feature you need already built in (modem, Ethernet, external video, USB, firewire) and an antenna for adding 802.11b wireless networking for a mere C-note. They are built rugged, have nice screens, and are reasonably priced.
Apple may never be able to compete on raw cost-for-hardware in the destop arena, where a home-built PC remains the ideal choice for penny pinchers (unless a Mac OS machine is worth the slight premium to you)... But their laptops take a back seat to nobody.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.